


Dark Side of the Moon

by Deborah Laymon (dejla)



Series: Living Under The Influence [1]
Category: Miami Vice
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1988-12-08
Updated: 1988-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dejla/pseuds/Deborah%20Laymon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't hassle me, Detective. I'm trying to keep your city from becoming the punchline of a joke."</p><p>Crockett said, "What's the joke?"</p><p>"What's three miles deep and glows in the dark?"</p><p>Mix Miami in the summer, the OCB personnel, a mercenary's widow, and a group of terrorists containing one true psychopath, shake, and run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Franzeska, who scanned and proofed the text, and then went beyond all kind acts to html the document for me. Without that, this could not have been posted. The original story was written somewhere between 1986 and 1988, which is why I'm guessing it was published around 1988. Further than that, I cannot go.
> 
> Also thanks to the original publisher, Susan Sizemore. And many thanks to SG, BH, RG, and all the other who have encouraged me over the years.

  
March 6, 1986

"This one's not dead yet," Detective Rico Tubbs said, squatting in the dust of the old warehouse. His dark fingers pressed against the throbbing artery in the dying man's throat. His free hand lay on his thigh, those fingers quivering a bit in fastidious distaste.

"I'll get an ambulance," said his partner. Sonny Crockett ran out of the door, his feet raising small puffs of rancid dust.

Whatever jagged-edged tool caused the gaping wounds in the other two's throats had somehow missed the carotids here.

Rico tried to guess how long the man must have laid here: blood oozing from his veins, his hands bound to his ankles, knowing death hovered lazily overhead, in no hurry.

The eyes opened. Rico jumped.

They—he-saw the detective. Dying, but alert. The lips shaped something. Unsevered windpipe; the lips made sound. Rico bent closer.

"See-eye-five."

"What?" Sounded like a British accent.

C-I-5. We're—" in long gasps, breath rasping like bees buzzing.

"Cl5. Fox found—us—first. Tell—Cowley—sorry. Tried." His eyes fluttered shut again. "Hang on," Rico said futilely. "Hang on, man, we'll have an ambulance here in a minute or so."

The pale hand groped blindly. After a second, Rico took hold of it. It—he—gripped painfully, with surprising strength.

"Crockett! Tell 'em to get moving!"

Not too long after that, the fingers lost all grip.

Lieutenant Martin Castillo set the phone delicately back in the cradle, and stared unblinkingly at it a moment. So that was George Cowley of C15—of the British Government. Clever. Ruthless. And dangerous.

"CI5," Sonny Crocked said, from the doorjamb. "The English guy— "

"British."

"British guy, Murphy—Nick Murphy—who came to last month's international conference on drug abuse, he was CI5, wasn't he?"

"Yes." Castillo scribbled on a piece of paper. "You and Tubbs go to this address. A Jordan-Connelly, female, possibly British—pick her up and bring her back here."

Sonny treated it as a dismissal, taking the square of notepaper and starting for the outer office.

"Crockett!"

"Lieutenant?"

"As an informant. Not a suspect."

Sonny nodded.

After a moment, Castillo got up and headed for the outer office himself. Trudy Joplin sat feeding data into a computer. He stopped by her desk and she looked up, her manicured burgundy nails pausing over the keys. "File on Jordan Connelly, if there is one. And any related. Bring 'em to my office as soon as you get 'em."

Right, Lieutenant," she said, hitting keys in rapid-fire, with a machine-gun rattle.

Not five minutes later, Trudy knocked on his door and brought in a sheaf of computer paper. "I only glanced at this, Lieutenant," she told him. "Not much on a Jordan Connelly. But there _was_ an _Alan_ Connelly, as well, and the system just about core-dumped on me."

"Thank you," he said. She paused.

"Anything else I can do?"

"No," he said. "Thank you."

As she left, the Vice Squad Lieutenant spread the file out on his desk and scanned it.

Jordan Connelly: female, born Rebekah Jordan Lang 1952, graduated MTT, BS in geology in 1972, hired by African-American Gems in late 1972 for Capetown-South Africa branch of company. Missing, presumed dead in 1977 in the Congo—rescinded in 1984, added note of British-American register of marriage to one Alan Robert Connelly by a Fr. Paolo Xavier in a Congolese Jesuit mission—1976. Last known address: Lilke, Switzerland.

Castillo raised his eyebrows.

Alan Connelly. He flipped pages over. Born Alan Robert Connelly in Polruan, Cornwall 1932. British Army, 1948-1960. Last rank held: Sergeant Major. AWOL in Kenya, 1960. Warrants expired in Kenya, Angola, Uganda, Swaziland: murders, acts against the lawful government, gunrunning, robbery, smuggling, acts against the lawful government. Listed by Interpol as a known mercenary, 1966. Missing, presumed dead in 1977 in the Congo. Death certificate issued in Else, Switzerland—May 1986. Cause of death—homicide. Warrant pending on one Marchon Choucheaux, not executed due to death of suspect in Cornwall, Great Britain. Added note of British-American register of marriage to one Rebekah Jordan Lang by Fr. Paolo Xavier in a Congolese Jesuit mission—1976. Last known address: Lilke, Switzerland.

Castillo did not whistle. But he did lean back in his chair and stare blankly into space. Mercenaries he knew from the Far East Mercenaries' women he knew as well: either hard, mannish, amoral—or unknowing, innocent housewives. This woman George Cowley assured him could not be a suspect, had in fact assisted C15 in investigation, was a mercenary's widow?

His reverie was interrupted. Sonny Crockett's tanned Anglo face appeared in the doorway. "Lieutenant? We've got her."

A tall woman, in a tailored blue suit and white gloves, stepped through the door. Her low-heeled white pumps added little or no height. Her face—

§§§

_Receptions bored him as much as Crockett or Tubbs, but Castillo knew his duty, and did it as faithfully as his mother had attended Mass. The end of the International Conference on Drug Abuse required a reception, and his presence. So he came, and reluctantly performed small talk._

She came as Nicholas Murphy's date. Castillo saw the British agent standing with his arm around her, and then later—

In a knot of men, laughing, he noticed a tall Anglo woman, her hair as bright as a Florida sunset braided with gold chain and fresh-water pearls, the long red-gold tail spilling over her grey silk Cheong-sam. She told them some joke, not dirty, but in a heavy Cockney accent.

She moved easily, like someone trained to move.

As he studied her, her eyes shifted and caught his. The smile started to fade from her lips; a question lurked behind her eyes for a second, and then, as if embarrass ed or unnerved, she looked away.

He disappeared into the crowd out of habit.

§§§

Jordan Connelly.

She held out her right hand, gloved, with some polite murmur. As he took her hand, he looked into her green eyes, and observed the polite smile fade again. For one fraction of a second, her hand pulled at his, then relaxed.

The reddish-gold hair swept back from her face in a very feminine twist, up off her neck. She could have been an illustration: British gentlewoman attend ing afternoon tea.

The voice was American.

"Lieutenant Castillo." She pronounced his name correctly. "Mr, Cowley telephoned me. I understand that I might have some information for you." At his gesture, she sat, knees together and ankles crossed, her gloved hands clasping her purse.

"Three men were ,killed this morning. One of them mentioned the name Fox before he died."

Her eyes said nothing. "I knew a bloke named Fox." Now he heard Britain in her voice. "But that was in Capetown and these ten years past. And this isn't his style."

"What was?"

She sounded still cooL still professional. "Money, naturally. I can tell you more if I can see the bodies."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sonny react, a half-step backwards to lean against the nearest file cabinet, and a waiting expression taking place of his noncommittal blankness. The woman could not have seen it, but she either heard or felt it. Her shoulders tensed, and her head shifted, the green-gold eyes sliding sidelong. At some point she must have gotten the detective in her view, because the eyes paused. Then she came back front, eyes re-focussing on him. The shoulders stayed rigid.

Didn't like people behind her. Interesting.

So the lady's surface concealed bedrock. "I'll take you down, Mrs. Connelly."

She winced. "Jordan," she said. "Please."

He stood, and she rose easily, most of her weight on the balls of her feet, like a dancer—or a fighter. Castillo judged her height. The heels were about an inch-and-a-half—with them on, Jordan Connelly was not quite as tall as Sonny Crockett, a half-inch difference or so.

Stepping aside to let her exit the room first, Castillo smelt her scent. Lilacs. Under the fluorescents, her reddish hair glowed like flames. She glanced around the room. He saw some of the men looking at her—secretively, or openly—and noticed that her walk slowed a little, as if in response. The walk he remembered: lazy, graceful, edged with sensuality.

The women looked at her as well. In the middle of a conversation, Trudy and Gina stopped. Gina had spoken to Mrs. Connelly at the reception. Would they remember each other?

Gina's eyes said she did.

At the minute the dark-haired woman's eyes changed, Jordan paused by the desk. Castillo moved forward a step or two, then half-turned, catching both faces clearly. Trudy watched them all, curiously.

"Detective Calabrese, isn't it?" Jordan sounded cautious as she said the name. "We met at the reception last month—"

"I remember," Said Gina, and smiled.

Jordan. returned the expression, and held out her gloved right hand. The fingers of the left adjusted on the purse, clumsily.

Clumsily?

The left hand looked stiff.

Crippled?

Gina took the hand, smiling herself. "You came with Nick Murphy. How is he "Wrote to tell me he meant to retire next year in Florida. Said he could get used to Yanks."

Gina laughed. "So much for our brains, huh?"

"Ah, well, you can't trust an Englishman. Thinks with his hormones, doesn't he?" Jordan's eyes flicked back to Castillo, and then she said to Gina, "Excuse me. Maybe we'll have a chance to talk later."

"I'd like that," was Calabrese's response.

Castillo escorted Jordan Connolly downstairs. "We'll take my car."

She nodded.

A warm salty wind blew across the parking lot, and her blue linen jacket flapped in it. She put the left hand up to her hair, where wisps fluttered over her eyes.

The early-morning sun polished the paving to a glassy sheen.

Castillo paused to pull his sunglasses out of his breastpocket. People moved back and forth across the lot, chattering to one another or walking in moody silence. Her eyes touched each one, with the intent look of a—soldier? artist?—as if she looked at each person separately, categorizing them.

He held the door for her. She eased down, using her left hand as little as possible, under the disguised In the her small Her sunglasses were framed, and as dark then swung her long legs dash. He noted the muscles, by sheer stockings.

In the car, she rummaged through bag for an eyeglass case. Her sunglasses were large, square-framed, and as dark as the ones Crockett preferred.

'"You have a good memory," he said.

She twitched, as if startled. "Eh? Oh, you mean Detective Calabrese. We spoke at the reception. l've been reading how women's roles have changed in the States, and it's interesting to see it in practice. Policewomen do more than stand chaperone." After a pause, she added casually, as if it were a throwaway, "And I tend to remember faces."

The Lieutenant noted it. "How women's roles have changed in the States?"

Pause. He saw, peripherally, the rueful grimace that crossed her mouth. Then she shrugged. "Sound a bit foreign, dunnit? I haven't been in—the U.S.—since nineteen-seventy-two. Since Watergate."

He had been in Saigon, involved in a hopeless war, watching a man he distrusted elected again to the highest office. "Fourteen years is a long time."

A Her voice went very low and soft. "Too long."

"Where were you?"

"All over. Africa, for a while, and then Switzerland."

"Job?"

"I'm a geologist." Another pause. "Was, Then I got married."

He turned the corner, and waited. A block from the County Morgue, he said, "Is your husband in Miami?"

"Alan's dead."

"Recently?"

This pause went on a little longer. Martin turned to look at her. Her face had all the serene blankness of a madonna. The glasses hid her eyes. When she did speak, there was no expression in her voice. Nine months, three days, twenty hours. I can't give you minutes and seconds. Is the morgue far from here?"

"No," He made the left turn into the lot.

 

In the coolness of the Forensics lab, she sighed a little, as if in relief, and ran a hand absently over her hair.

"Are you cold?"

"Oh, no." Her answer sprang out; then a slight color crept up her face. "l'm used to the Alps. This is lovely."

"You must find it hard adjusting to Florida." The receptionist spoke to him, and he asked for Tony.

When he turned back to her, she had removed the glasses, and stood idly thumbing through a back issue of _Law Enforcement_. With her eyes on the page, Jordan Connelly said, "My mother's here. In a nursing home."

He nodded

The bodies graphically matched Rico and Sonny's reports. Her nostrils flared. She examined them, closely, but the cool repose of her face changed, the mouth tightening, the eyes glittering and almost golden, like an angry cat's. After the scrutiny, Jordan laid the sheets neatly and with an almost maternal tenderness back over the dead faces.

Castillo said, "Yes?"

"Are there pictures?"

He looked at Tony, indicating by a lift of his eyebrows that the question should be answered.

"Yes," said the coroner. "l've got them in the office."

Her eyes flicked back and forth between them. "May I?"

Tony led the way. The Lieutenant held the door for her again. As she passed him, he thought her shoulders trembled a little. Just a little.

She took a chair in the office, an old battered armless one, and accepted the pictures. She squinted at them, then stopped to fish in her purse and find a different eyeglass case. This one held a pair of glasses with square black rims, and she put them on before re-examining the photographs. She laid them on the desk, and folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes looked faraway; she chewed on her lower lip. Uncrossing her ankles, she dug in the small purse again, pulling out a memo pad and a pen. Uncapping the pen with her teeth, she flipped it to put the cap on the other end.

Then she began to sketch, glancing from the photos to her ink lines. Soon a neat representation of the knots showed, and she traced them with the pen, as if testing how they might have been tied.

Yeah," she said. The pad and pen went back in her purse, and she leaned back against the old wood. "All right. Fox didn't kill these men. But those are his knots. If I had to be absolute about this, Lieutenant Castillo, I'd say you were dealing with two men. Fox and II Dutch. She tapped the photos. "This was made with a particular knife—Dutch's trademark—a blade with a jagged edge, like teeth. I don't know who the hell sold it to him, but I wish they'd refrained."

He kept his eyes on the floor, listening to the strange weary tone in her controlled professional voice. "Why do you think they were killed?"

"Probably Fox decided they meant trouble. He may have figured out they were coppers. So he had them eliminated." Her mouth thinned again. "They're white. He'd figure it wouldn't be a loss."

"Because they were Caucasian?"

"That's about the size of it." Jordan grimaced. "It'd've been worse if they'd been American."

He filed that. "If you saw photos of this Fox and Dutch, would you—"

"l'd recognize them, yes. Have you got some?"

Martin watched her hands, the fingers white against the leather of her purse. "No. But I'd like you to go through the mug shots."

Jordan nodded. "Now?"

"Is there a problem?"

"No." She stood and stretched. Then she smiled, briefly, oddly—with the charm of a woman willingly off-guard a moment. "l'm at your disposal, Lieutenant."

 

Trudy paid attention to this Mrs. Connelly's eyes. Odd eyes, even if not framed by old-fashioned square-rimmed eyeglasses. The irises were green with little gold flecks, as if someone had dusted them with glitter; the glasses had narrow black frames, lending her a prim, scholarly air. Usually, Trudy Joplin prided herself on her ability to read people through this woman's eyes their eyes. But gave very little away. Would be interesting, the detective said to herself, to know what the boss thought of her.

Jordan Connelly sat quite still, with the gloved left hand resting in her lap, and the right hand, bare, flipping the pages in the book. Like something out of an Agatha Christie novel, a woman who wore white gloves with a suit in the middle of the day. In nineteen-eighty-six. Jordan spent no more than a minute or two on each page, her eyes flicking from one mug shot to the next, left to right, down, automatically, precisely. Those were the only movements she made, the eyes ticking back and forth, down and up, and the hand flipping the page over regular as a clock.

How long had they been here?

Trudy glanced at her watch, then looked at Gina. Gina looked tired. Bored. Three hours of mug shots. Every damn one in the place.

Most people complained about now. Hell, _most_ people complained after _one_ hour. And this Jordan Connelly sat there, paging through godonlyknew how many faces of lowlifes as if reading pages in a catalog.

Last page. Last book.

Jordan turned it, leaned back, and removed the glasses. "Any more?"

Gina said, "No, that's it. None of them clicked?"

"I'm sorry." It sounded real, not just courtesy. The informant reached for her glasses. "Shall I go through them again?"

"No." Gina glanced at Trudy. Trudy nodded. No point in beating it to death. "No, that's all right. What about giving a description to a police artist?"

Jordan folded the glasses, slid them into the case, and snapped it shut as she put the case into her purse. Rubbing the bridge of her nose, she said wearily, "I can try. My description will be ten years old, though. I don't know how that will affect someone else looking at the drawing."

Trudy frowned. "Are you sure you'd recognize them?"

Oh, yes." Quick answer, clear and certain, and then a pause, while Jordan's mascara-darkened lashes dropped over her green eyes. Her voice changed a little, now as creamy and bland as her uncommunicative face. "I'm rather good at faces. And very few people change drastically over the years. Something stays the same, after all." She shrugged. "Not that I'm telling you anything you don't know."

Damn. Trudy wished she'd had a chance to read those printouts before they disappeared into Castillo's files. "Maybe you can tell us a little about them. Where did you meet these two men?"

The eyes remained veiled. The left hand worked the glove onto the right, awkwardly. How had the hand been hurt? It looked as if the fingers didn't work. "Capetown," said Jordan.

"South Africa?" Gina sounded puzzled. "What were you doing in Capetown."

The green eyes impaled the detective a moment. Then Jordan smiled. Trudy thought it looked real. She wasn't certain.

"Working, Detective Calabrese. I was interning while finishing a master's in geology. That was—nineteen-seventy-two. The firm went out of business in seventy-five."

"But you stayed." Gina kept her soft routine.

Jordan's gaze switched briefly to Trudy. Still no goddamn expression: like a puppet or a store mannequin. The eyes slid back to Gina. "I fell in love."

"With Alan Connelly?" Trudy wondered if she'd been too quick.

The lashes dropped again. "With Alan Connelly."

"Is that how you met 'Fox' and 'Dutch'?" Gina picked up the strand again, smoothly.

"Fox was Alan's bomb expert—" almost as if the words weren't thought out, and then the quiet voice quit.

Trudy realized that those words _hadn't_ been considered, they had only been uppermost in their informant's mind, and probably Jordan Connelly had never meant to say them aloud. Then she _heard_ the words, and said, before _she_ thought, "Bomb?"

A long pause. Reluctantly, Jordan answered, "Fox had a knack for explosives."

"Was Alan in the military?" Gina glanced at Trudy, with a look of 'are you all right' that Trudy confirmed with a nod.

After another pause, Jordan sighed. "Well, that depends, dunnit? I mean, on which military you're talking about?"

"What military are we talking about?" Trudy tried to remember what had been in those files.

"Alan—" Jordan's eyes were blank. "Was a mercenary. It varied, from time to time. Do you want me to try the police artist?"

Trudy looked at the painted porcelain face. Mask. Mercenaries? "So Fox and—Dutch?—they were mercenaries too?'

The mask hardened. "Yes."

"Fox was a bomb expert?" Gina pressed the subject. "Then what was Dutch?"

This pause went on so long Trudy finally stood, thinking that the woman meant not to answer.

And Jordan said, in a Voice like South African diamonds, "Part of the time he was an interrogator. The rest of it he was an assassin. He really got into his work."

Gina and Trudy looked at each other over her head.

Very carefully, Gina said, "I'll—go find the artist." The addendum of 'and tell the Lieutenant' Trudy understood

The black detective caught a movement in her periphery/and glanced down Jordan Connelly, a slight frown creasing her forehead, rubbed her left hand as if it ached.

 

Jordan almost rubbed her eyes. In time, she remembered she'd painted her lashes that morning, and turned the gesture into rubbing the bridge of her nose. Lieutenant Castillo did not look up from his study of the police artist's drawings. Still, she had the distinct, unnerving sense that he knew everything she did as she sat there across from him.

His desk was clean. How the hell could anybody work with a desk that clean? She'd have been afraid she'd get smudges on a polished surface that bare. At GemCorp, her desks had always carried files and pads and notes here and there, with her working blotter clear. When she had turned to freelancing at home, her study held all her working materials, down to her tools and clothes.

Neatfreaks. She hated neatfreaks. Besides, this bloke just gave her the creeps. Jordan took a long, slow, easy breath, pulling the air in, sensing the stuff as it filled her lungs, analysing her behavior—as Fox would have put it—

The problem was that police and police stations still made her jumpy, and this particular police lieutenant reminded her a great deal of Totalitarian Police Lieutenants She Had Met In Her Life. In manner, if not in reactions. She admitted he had treated her with unfailing courtesy and to the letter of the law. It was only those invisible brick walls built around his eyes, the control that burnt her nerves to watch. The little flags scattered in his manner that said, no outsiders need apply.

So, she herself liked privacy and control. So what?

So here he kept all the authority and control. She was essentially as helpless as in a Capetown jail.

At last he did look up, and she dropped her analysis of her mental state to watch as his dark eyes slid past her to the door. Figuring out who was present and not present? She almost turned, but decided it would not be politic to advertise her nerves.

Face it, she told herself, you've seen men with eyes like that. This bloke would be more at home in a jungle, with an Uzi and a knife.

His eyes returned. You've been very helpful, Mrs. Connelly. Thank you." Neat periods on his sentences. "Detectives Crockett and Tubbs will drive you back home."

"Thank you," she replied, and winced; it sounded so soap-opera inane. The next cliche rolled right on out; she sighed mentally, wondered where she was finding all these incredibly intelligent lines "If there's anything else I can do—"

"We'll be in touch." Well, he wasn't above a Dragnet cliche himself. The eyes and face looked less like the side of Mount Rushmore. As if by giving him what he requested, she'd taken a step or two closer to those invisible barriers.

The eyes still fascinated her. They said so little—and so much?

Bloody hell, she was staring at him. And he met her stare with a faintly quizzical (and possibly amused?) scrutiny of his own. Jordan dropped her eyes. She felt, for the first time in months, heat flare up in her face Blushing. Christ have mercy.

She tightened her jaw, and said between her teeth, "Sorry. Daydreaming."

And that made 'thank you' _mild_. She and words were not cooperating today.

Feeling his eyes' weight, she kept hers on her hands until the pressure vanished. With real relief, Jordan stood and smoothed her gloves.

Castillo escorted her into the outer office, and arranged her ride home.

This was it. It was over. She could go back home, disappear into her carefully arranged life, and vegetate. She had wanted that, after all.

But on the ride home—and at home—the pleasant lassitude of the past several months slipped her grasp. Cowley's terse Scots voice, Castillo s molten-iron eyes, the questions posed by the dead bodies cycled over and over in her brain.

Fox and Dutch. In Miami. Dealing _drugs_? Enforcing? For whom?

_It's not my problem. I'm not a police officer. There's not one thing I can do about it. I've done my share. Stop worrying at it, woman, let it bloody be._

But she slept extremely badly that night. And the next few nights after that, as well.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO  
March 18, 1986

"Another one?" Jordan glanced across the table at her housekeeper's eldest son.

Raul showed his teeth briefly in a smile too old for his sixteen-year-old mouth. Lately, he'd been struggling to grow a mustache, and it looked like a line drawn in straggly pencil above his upper lip. "I think I will never be as fast as you, Señora."

"Of course you will.' She went to look over his shoulder. "Got this one right on the first time, didn't you? Look, pet, I've got eighteen years on you. You get that eighteen years under your belt, while you're working on this, and I'll bet you anything you like you're faster'n I am."

The boy paid her an extravagant compliment in Spanish, and she laughed. Imitating the broad Floridian accent, she told him, "Honey, it ain't the years, it's the mileage."

The grin was unfeigned, wide and youthful, not the adult attitude he usually assumed as befitted his role: oldest male in Hispanic household. "Twenty-eight c is the next," he said.

"Story problems. I hate story problems, Raul—" Jordan read it over his shoulder again, visualizing the words in her memory. Then she sat down in her chair and began to formulate the equations.

Consuela Socarres set a cup of coffee in front of her son. "Mrs. Connelly, will you have coffee or tea today?"

Stretching, Jordan sighed. "Tea, I think. Indian. Cream and sugar."

"Sí."

It took her two or three minutes to do the problem and check it longhand. She sipped the strong sweet stuff, and poured herself a second cup before studying Raul's painstaking work. "No, you went off on a tangent there. Take a look at mine." She glanced up. "Has the paper come yet?"

"No sé," began the Cuban woman.

"I want a walk. I'll go check."

She escaped before her housekeeper could remind her it was not her place to fetch things.

The sunshine, even though only March in Miami, was as strong as her tea. In Capetown, the sun would have been like this, at the end of summer—March meant the beginning of fall there. She collected one _Miami Herald_ , neatly folded by the paperboy. Jordan sauntered back to the walk, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her bare back. In the house, she stepped out of her sandals and paused to retie her halter before opening the paper. More blood and gore. More robberies. More murders.

     Execution-Style Slayings In Warehouse

Nonsense. Somebody got mowed down St. Valentine style, and the papers called it executions— No. Wait.

She read the descriptions through twice, disbelievingly.

Bodies were bound and gagged, then their throats cut by what Robbery detectives described as a sawtoothed blade, possibly a jigsaw ....

Maybe it was—what did they call it? Copycat? What if it weren't? What if ?

"Mrs. Connelly?" A hand dropped on her arm. Consuela. "Mrs, Connelly!

"Qué pasa?!"

Jordan shook her head. It can't be— "Consuela, I have to go out. I'll be back—" She looked down at her yellow cotton shorts. "Not going out in this get-up,"

Ignoring such frivolities as stockings, she grabbed the first things to hand: a batik cotton skirt and a short-sleeved silk tunic. Her hands shook as she fought the buttons on the skirt's side. The paper lay open on the bed. She refused to look at it.

She had to be wrong. Please _God_ , she had to be wrong.

 

From memory, she found the building. Everything about the world glowed with unnatural brilliance. Adrenaline. She was too high. She tried to center.

Rain. She focussed on the thoughts of slow soft rain, huge pear-shaped drops trickling out of the air, and falling onto the sluggish grey-green waters of wide African rivers in the dry season. Water flows. Coming back up out of the exercise, she found it oddly ironic that Fox had taught her to center.

Unhurriedly, Jordan got out of the LTD and walked across the lot into the building. If you looked like you knew where you were going and like you had business, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no one would stop you.

As the door of the OCB office swung shut behind her, she saw the blond detective—Crockett—look up. He stood, meeting her before she took more than a step or two. Wariness as well as friendly curiosity.

"Mrs. Connelly? May I help you?"

She kept her voice low, for better control. "Might I see the Lieutenant? It's important—it's further information about your case."

"Can you tell me?"

Jordan said, "No," before she thought about it. She winced. Tactful, really tactful. But she needed to tell Castillo, the man Cowley had sent her to, before she phoned Cowley to tell him the job was still alive and kicking.

Sonny said, "Wait here." He went off towards the back, and she watched him. Damned air condition ing— She wrapped her arms around herself, standing as utterly still as she could manage.

"Here." Sonny's partner—Rico Tubbs—touched her shoulder lightly "sic down." He motioned to his chair

"You're working."

"Sit down. You don't look well."

She grimaced. "I don't feel well." The chair felt warm from his body. She clasped her hands, leaning forward. Forgot the damn gloves. She rubbed at the red-and-white scars on her left palm, absently, frowning at the sting of sweat in the flesh. As she glanced up, she met Tubb's eyes. He stared at her crippled hand. She hid it in her skirt.

"Looks nasty," he said.

"It was." Damn her vivid memory: just the words brought back images, a long silver strand of piano wire lying on a London street, the terrible pain in her fingers, the struggle to get air into her throat, the echo of Choucheaux's sadistic laughter. The scars on her throat should have been worse It had only been sheer luck that she used her left hand and not her right "Look pretty recent," Tubbs continued.

Jordan looked at the scars, flexing her crippled fingers slowly. "About six months ago."

Sonny came out of the Lieutenant's office. He nodded. She immediately met him in the middle of the room.

"Go on in," he said, in a gravelly, disapproving voice. "Lieutenant says he's got time to see you."

"Thank you." Time. Taking their time due to a hunch. What the hell did she know about detective work? And police business, too. Nothing to do with her.

Except that if it were true, it made no sense. No sense at all. She hated things that made no sense.

As she stepped through the door, Castillo looked up at her. Adrenaline surged up, choking her. She remembered the reception, remembered standing by Murphy, actually enjoying herself, and then looking up into a pair of dark eyes. Men often looked at her. Alan had taught her to be the kind of woman men looked at, and she liked it. But all these eyes said was 'you interest me': steady, intense, serious. The kind of eyes—in spite of all her training in memorizing faces, she hadn't _seen_ his face.

Abruptly, hearing harshness in her Voice and hating herself for the reaction, Jordan said, "Read the morning paper yet?"

"No."

She laid the front page out in front of him, neatly, and tapped the obvious. "How accurate are American newspapers?

"It varies," he said dryly, but he read the article. His face showed no change—but he reached for his phone.

Jordan turned away. The adrenaline buzz faded. She suppressed a childish urge to cover her ears. Elsewhere, to be anywhere else... Africa flooded her memories: the salty, pungent perfume of the ocean, tasting ancient as old grief; the cry of the jungle, where white men were out of place; cold July air in Capetown chilling her to the bone; Alan's voice, soft and British, saying to her, "Farie, ameni—" And the nights, black satin nights in his arms, with the Southern Cross swinging above the horizon...

She tasted salt again, and hurriedly wiped her eyes. Cracking up, that was it, she couldn't even think these days without the tears breaking.

Castillo's phone connected with the cradle.

Blinking in the strong artificial light, Jordan turned to survey the Lieutenant.

He looked down at his desk. Beneath the mustache, his hard mouth was a thin dark line.

Her stomach fluttered uneasily. Why had she eaten that morning? "Copycat?"

"No."

"How can you be _sure_?" Her voice arched, shrilly and fiercely. His eyes lifted, impaling her like a butterfly. Jordan put her fist to her mouth, forcing further words down, and dropped her eyes.

"The papers," he said precisely, "were not informed that the female employees were not killed, bound and gagged. When one of the robbers started to molest them, the leader stopped him. Called him—'Dutch'."

Dutch. Alan standing over him—Dutch in the thick African river mud, red oozing through the rip in his khaki shirt—the knife in her hand bloody and the blood sticky on her fingers, blood dripping into the silty green water. Alan's voice saying, "Next time, I'll let her kill you, Dutch." Next time. Next—

"Mrs. Connelly." The voice sharpened. " _Jordan_."

She looked at him out of the past, seeing nothing she recognized. After a second, she drew in a shuddering breath, and dropped into a chair, rubbing the scars on her hand. No place to hide. No more safe numbness. "It doesn't make sense," she said, repeating her earlier thoughts aloud. "I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense."

"Why?"

"Fox is—" Shiogi Kent was a lot of things. "A mercenary. A soldier."

 

Castillo watched her eyes. Her face came alive as she sat fidgeting; most of it was the eyes, the troubled green-and-gold eyes. The eyes said she told the truth. What was it Gina had said about their conversation? "Detective Calabrese said you told her he knew explosives."

She nodded. "Built bombs and mines—" She sounded too caught in anxiety to pay attention to her words. "Did some of the wetwork, too, dinne?" Her fingers interlaced. The tendons in the left had definitely been cut at some time.

Wetwork. A professional's term.

"He's so damn quiet," she said, shaking her head, and the unbound red hair spilled over her shoulders like silk. "This isn't his style. He was technical. Not a commander. Not like Alan. He didn't run jobs. It doesn't make sense."

"So who's he working for?"

Her eyes came back to his, and her face twisted a little. "I don't know the States anymore. _You_ tell _me_ Who the hell in Miami would hire African mercenaries?"

Silence.

He said, "Thank you, Mrs. Connelly We'll check it out." As an informant she had done more than enough

She stood up, slowly, and paused with her good hand on the back of the chair. The pale yellow silk tunic glowed under the fluorescents. "Lieutenant, I don't know what's going on here. But—this _is_ my country, still." Her pale Anglo face looked like marble, clear and innocent "I want to help. Is there _anything_ else I can do?"

"It would help if we had an actual photograph."

She ran a hand through her hair, frowning. "I have got some old albums in the attic—l'm not sure. But there might be a picture of Fox in those I can't promise you, but I will look.

Martin considered who to send with her. Gina and Trudy, probably She seemed to hold an attitude about men

Then she said, all in one breath, "Of course I can identify him for you." Her eyes widened, as if she hadn't meant to say that, "I suppose I'm probably one of three or four people living who could."

"You know him pretty well?"

Jordan glanced at the floor, and rubbed the toe of her sandal against the linoleum. "I daresay I know the sort of places he hangs about in—and I'm not referring to massage parlors."

He kept back the smile. "It might be useful, if you'd be will ing to accompany one of my people."

The eyes came back up again. Tired eyes; maybe not quite human. "Whatever I can do."

Martin nodded.

 

At ten o'clock, the March sky of Miami smelt of coming rain. The house was locked; good, Consuela had remembered. Jordan turned the key in the deadbolt and shoved the door open. She paused on the threshold, blocking Gina Calabrese and Trudy Joplin.

"Consuela?"

Her housekeeper answered immediately. "Sí, Mrs. Connelly."

She held the door for the two detectives, then entered herself, kicking her shoes off next to the credenza. With a glance at her guests, she said, "Will you excuse me? I need to speak to my housekeeper.

"They looked at each other. Gina said, "No problem."

Did they make decisions together or did Gina make them? Jordan told herself to stop thinking like a tactician. "l shan't be long. Please make yourselves comfortable."

If there had been a problem, Consuela would have addressed her as "Miss Lang." Full-scale emergencies would be signalled by "Miss Jordan"—one of the few ways she could get Consuela to call her by her Christian name.

Steamy air filled the kitchen with the smell of soup. Consuela's brown face wrinkled with her concentration, even though she did no more than sprinkle herbs with one hand and stir with the other. The youngest of her eight children, Elena, sat in the middle of the tiled kitchen floor, play ing with the wooden blocks Jordan had resurrected from one of the attic boxes. The four-year-old looked up and smiled, gap-toothed.

"Hoi, gatita," said Jordan, stooping to ruffle the child's silky black hair. She eased on down into a Crouch, watching Elena build a crazy-quilt house. "Consuela, I have guests."

"Los jurados?"

"Sí. Ladies."

Consuela sniffed. Her opinion of 'lady' police was clearly, if nonverbally, stated.

"We'll be bringing papers down from the attic. l'll clean them up later."

That got silence—probably a slightly offended silence.

With a mental sigh, Jordan continued, "Coffee, por favor?"

The small Cuban woman unbent. "Cafe Cubano?"

Jordan restrained a shudder. "Sí."

After a moment, Consuela said, "I will make Indian tea for you, as well, with cream and sugar. Cafe Cubano gives you bad dreams."

Jordan looked over at her. Consuela stared at the stove, but her dark eyes and expressive mouth showed enough emotion to more than compensate for Lieutenant Castillo's Latino imitation of a granite cliff. "Gracías, Consuela." Without any irony, she added, "You take such good care of me."

"Somebody has to do what you will not."

Elena chuckled and reached up as far as her pudgy arm would stretch to set a block on top of her tower.

"Señora?" An odd note in Consuela's voice.

Jordan frowned and glanced up again. "What's wrong?"

"It—is all right then?"

The little girl swung a block with all her might. The structure imploded in a crash of wood on tile. With shrieks of delight, Elena scooped up blocks into a heap of chestnut and mahogany stripes.

Clasping her hands, Jordan Connelly answered honestly. "No Consuela. It is not all right. It is—bloody awful."

"Are you in trouble?"

"If I were?" She watched as Elena began some sort of serpentine track with the blocks, matching stripes and patterns of the grained wood.

"Then we would go to a lawyer. That is how it is done here."

Jordan smiled. "Yes, we would. No, Consuela. As far as I know, I'm in no trouble. What it is—I know some men, liefling. They're the ones in trouble. And I'm telling the coppers—the police what I know."

"This you have to do."

Her knuckles hurt with the pressure. "Yes. This I need to do." Jordan ruffled Elena's hair again, then stood up. "I'd better get those papers."

"I will bring in the coffee when it is ready."

"Thank you."

When she walked back into the living room, both of the detectives were still standing. Trudy peered at the art nouveau lily painted across the front wall, and Gina stared out of the open French doors at the ocean. Almost on cue, they turned.

"Well, ladies," Jordan said. "Everything we want is in the attic. Can you climb a ladder?"

 

With a stack of leather-bound photo albums on the low glass-and-steel coffee table in front of her, Jordan knelt on the Oriental rug. "Let's see. Most of these, I think, are just tourist-type shots, but—" She looked up. "Do you want to help?"

"Sure." Trudy answered this time She sat down on the hassock. Gina crossed the room and curled up on the floor, drawing the skirt of her yellow dress over her bare legs.

Jordan parceled out books. "A lot of these pictures are pretty poor. l'm not much cop at photography—" She paused. "You should pardon the expression. It's British."

Gina smiled. "You do that pretty frequently, don't you?"

"Try living with a Brit for thirteen years," Jordan retorted, without heat. "It'd fair shake up your grammar, too."

Trudy ignored the badinage and turned pages. She stopped abruptly and whistled.

'Mmm?" Jordan leaned across to look. "Oh. I'd forgotten I took that—" He hadn't put his shirt on yet. White scars marred his tanned chest. The rising sun turned his tow hair almost white, and he paused in the act of drinking tea to smile at her while she snapped the picture. The Capetown sky had been surprisingly blue and cloudless that morning. Table Mountain looked like a great black wall in the background. "That's Alan." With a half-smile, she said, "Not too bad, eh?"

Trudy nodded. "Pretty good, I'd say," Gina commented.

"Ah, it doesn't do him justice." Jordan turned quickly to her own album. By now she should be through grieving. And she still felt that odd little flame of pride in their reactions to her man—God knew she ought to be past that possessive bourgeois shit by now, too.

Oh, that was an old one. What had she done with that ostentatious green brocade thing, anyway?

"That's some dress," Gina said. "Feathers? In your hair?"

"Oh, it was very Twenties that year. You can't see it with the shawl I'm holding, but I wore white opera gloves."

Trudy pressed the page down a little. "You wore your hair real short then didn't you? What were you? Twenty-four?"

Jordan chuckled. "Thanks. Twenty-two, tryin' hard for thirty. l'd just started to let my hair grow, and the feathers were part of a comb—kept it down."

"Wedding picture?"

"No, just a—you won't believe this—night at the opera."

Trudy looked at her. Jordan held up a hand.

No, really, opera." She chuckled again. "I was married in khaki."

"Now I know you're putting me on."

"God's own," Jordan said, "I swear, we were married by a Jesuit missionary in the Congo, three and a half million miles southeast of nowhere-in-particular-civilized. Didn't even have a frigging _ring_ five minutes before the ceremony, and Alan traded this native girl a pack of Players, a bottle of whiskey, and two yards of scarlet silk for the gold ring in her nose."

Trudy still looked incredulous.

"He sterilized it over the candles in the chapel—wanted to get it hot enough to shape it to my finger—" She worked the beaten gold ring off the third finger of her left hand, and held the hand out. "See? The damn thing was still hot when Alan put it on, and I never even felt it, I must have been in shock—" You were running a hundred and four temperature, her mind supplied, but she ignored it. "Two days later I realized it hurt and that was when we found out he'd branded me. I used to tease him about it. Embarrassed him, too, dinnit? She finished, on a long breath, and stopped, startled at the eager tone in her voice. "Listen to me babble on, eh?"

But they both smiled as if they understood.

Gina said softly, You must have loved him very much."

"Oh," she said. " _Love_ —"

The world smelt of bougainvillea and early-morning tea, echoed of small birds and long-limbed monkeys—Table Mountain rose as tall as God, and the sea at sunrise couldn't match Alan's blue eyes—

"Alan was Alan." She rubbed the worn leather of the album. "I always thought love was a sappy work, you know, something Victorian, and then—" Turning a page, she found the one photo of him in fancy dress, morning coat and tie. "That morning, the priest used that bit out of Ruth. 'Whither thou goest, there also I shalt go—'" Her throat and lungs ached with breathing. "It was like that doggerel abut the little girl. When it was good, it was very very good and when it was bad, it was— Very bad." Two years watching him go mad. She flipped the page. "I love Alan," she said, using her tenses deliberately. She then focussed all her attention on the page.

After a second, they went on as well.

Jordan drank tea, and they drank the inky black stuff Miami passed off as coffee, and the afternoon disappeared in bright streaks of blue-tinted sky and sunshine.

Suddenly Gina Calabrese said, "Hold it. Is this one of them? Jordan?"

She peered across the table. "How can you tell? It's a lousy shot— Wait. If I'd put my reading glasses on, I could see better, couldn't I?" She dug out the case, and put on the dark-rimmed glasses. "Early morning, looks like— yeah." She took off the glasses. "That's Dutch. Looks like he shot a wild pig." How many years? "It was a wild boar. We ate pretty well that campaign."

Trudy squinted. 'Who's the dark kid next to him? The one who looks like he's asking for trouble?"

"Oh, that's Bodie."

"Bodie what?" said Gina.

"What Bodie. William something Phillip. Andrew. Just started going by Bodie—the blokes would call him Willie, you see, and he'd have to go knock hell out of one or two, or get hell knocked out of him and he cut it off to Bodie."

Jordan smiled a little, then frowned. "He and Dutch got along like lit matches and gelignite."

"Is he dead too?"

"Nope, Works for—" Jordan stopped. After a second's thought, she phrased it as, "I met Nick through Bodie. But the blond guy next to him, that is Dutch, bad as it is."

"Well, it's no prize," Trudy admitted, "but it's better than nothing."

Gina clipped it free of the tape.

Jordan fretted. "I didn't know as much about developing film then. It really is awful." With a flash of temper, the Latino woman told her, "It'll do. Stop apologizing. Guilt gets me down."

Ouch. Well, since you've got the luck, maybe you'll find one of Fox as well."

With a nonchalant air, Trudy asked, "Do they have names other than Fox and Dutch?"

You expected this. It's the logical question, after all. She shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

"You worked with them, didn't you?"

"Listen. You've been in the jungle yourself. Miami or Africa, it's all the same, really— The name a man gives you _is_ his name."

Two pairs of dark eyes met, then flicked back to her.

"It's the First Commandment, African translation," Jordan said. Half-lying but looking them guilelessly in the face. "Thou shalt not ask." She had known Fox's name since the day he promised Alan he'd teach her to fight. "l'm not the brightest thing since the sun, but I learn the rules quick." Promised he'd teach her to kill. She learned quickly all right.

A little sardonically, Trudy added, "And the second is 'thou shalt not answer"?"

Jordan's fingers shut into fists "I've been straight with you, Detective."

"About everything?"

"About everything connected with this case." Fox's name wouldn't do anything to help. "I've cooperated No one even had to ask twice."

The rising tension cracked all at once. Consuela entered with a tray: coffee, tea, and sandwiches.

Jordan checked her watch. "Five already?"

You need to eat," Consuela said "You didn't finish your breakfast." The implication of 'and didn't eat lunch' did not pass unmarked. Both of the detectives looked down to hide smiles

With a sigh, she took a cheese sandwich and munched. The housekeeper nodded and left satisfied.

Trudy said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come down on you."

"Thank you. I shouldn't have come out slugging either. You both work hard, and you must feel frustrated checking out leads. I'm not being obstructive, honestly— I mean, I don't even really know what all this is about."

Glances exchanged again.

"Look. I do know CI5 agents—off-duty, and don't look at me in that tone of voice—were playing drug traffickers to try and track down some international dealer they ID'd as Fox. Cowley says they were AWOL. I don't question Cowley, I know better. But that is all I know, and that's all I want to know, thank you very much. It's your business. I just want to help if I can." She pushed the plate into the center of the table. "Please help yourselves. I refuse to eat nine cheese sandwiches, even to please Consuela."

Laughter broke the second tension.

 

The grainy photo of Dutch stood alone as their lead. No pictures of Fox existed. When Gina and Trudy left, and after Raul had picked up his mother and sister, something occurred to Jordan. She paused, and tracked the reference down before locking the last door and switching on the security system.

She had never had photos of Fox.

Fox didn't like to be photographed. He almost acted superstitious about it.

A clever man, Fox—didn't the Japanese regard demons as ghost foxes?

 

She didn't sleep much better this night.


	3. Chapter 3

  
March 19, 1986

Rico Tubbs leaned back in his chair and swallowed coffee. The Connelly woman wore a suit this morning, something neat but loose Gloves hid the scars today, and that long red hair was braided, wrapped around her head like a—coronet, that was it. She had a pencil and a small flat notebook and it looked as if she sketched while she sat next to Sonny.

Crockett didn't like her being in on this. It showed.

Castillo continued, "Mrs. Connelly will make the rounds of the listed places—"

"That's crazy," Sonny said flatly. He stood up.

He got the Lieutenant's flat lethal look, but being Crockett, the look didn't faze him much. Rico noticed, though, that Jordan Connelly's mouth tightened, and the one quick glance she shot Crockett smoldered.

But Sonny wasn't looking at her, he was looking at Castillo. "She's a civilian. You've said it yourself, Lieutenant. We don't use informers for backup. These men are professionals. Somebody who can't handle herself on the street doesn't belong on stakeout."

Jordan laid the pencil and pad carefully on the table.

Crockett was getting himself in deep.

Very quietly, in a polite distant voice, very British, Mrs. Connelly said, "You do have a point, Detective."

Sonny swung around to look at her.

She stood, or started to, and her purse slid off her lap. He stooped for it automatically.

Jordan hit him.

Actually, she hit him twice, that Rico saw, once in the throat and once somewhere about the gut, with the side of her hand and then the knuckles. Then she did something—Rico saw her body move—and Sonny Crockett fell flat on his ass, blinking and gasping for air.

Rico glanced at his watch. Ten seconds, or thereabouts.

And for one fraction of that ten seconds, her eyes went as green as new grass, lit by a wicked laughter as old as Eve. The light vanished along with the razor-edged smile that flashed across her mouth. Politely, she offered Crockett a hand up.

He was dazed enough to take it.

As he stood there, still holding her gloved right hand, she said sweetly, "I've had a bit of practice."

Sonny shook his head.

Gina put a hand over her mouth, and Trudy looked down. Switek went into a coughing fit, and Zito let out one of his derisive hoots.

The Lieutenant said, "She's got a point. I'll take her around."

Her head jerked. She looked at him, and the dismay was plain. .Then, like the other expressions, it disappeared. So she'd pegged the boss as trouble looking for something to get into. Smart woman. But it would teach her to lose it in front of the Lieutenant.

Jordan sat down.

So did Sonny. Slowly and carefully.

Castillo went right on with the assignments.

Rico started with his notes. Until they got this petty stuff out of the way, it would be a busy schedule.

In the same calm voice, Castillo said, "Mrs. Connelly. Have you got a gun?"

Her lashes dropped over her green eyes. Her voice kept that politely distant note. "I haven't a permit to carry."

"That's not what I asked."

A pause. "It's my answer."

Castillo's eyes narrowed. Jordan did not look up from her clasped hands. After a moment, he said, "You'l1 have a permit by noon."

Now her eyes met his. They were that intense green guileless shade. "I have a gun."

He held out his hand.

She hesitated. Then her right hand slid behind her back, under her jacket, and produced a small neat black automatic, like a conjuror.

Crockett jumped. Rico flinched himself. All this time, she'd been sitting there with a gun?

The little thing spun along the table. Castillo picked it up, and began to copy off the serial number. "Walther," he said. "PPK?"

"PPK/S," she said. "It's regulation."

His eyes flicked up, then down.

Regulation. Right. The PPK/S just made the laws regarding gun barrel length. By one-tenth of a centimeter.

"A twenty-two," said the Lieutenant, "doesn't have much firepower."

"I can't handle anything much larger than a thirty-eight anymore." She rubbed her left hand. Her Voice vibrated with embarrassment. "Besides, if somebody's close enough to be hit with a handgun, it's where you hit him that counts, isn't it?"

He looked at her again.

Now she sounded defensive. Badgered. "And I was always told that if you could hit somebody With a handgun, he was too damn close to begin with."

Sonny snorted. With probably malice aforethought, he added, "She's got a point, Lieutenant."

Jordan bit her lower lip. Her lashes immediately dropped over her eyes.

The expression Sonny got from the boss definitely qualified as murderous Crockett became interested in his coffee cup.

Castillo said, "That's it. Keep me posted.

What a shame. Rico was enjoying this.

Jordan stood up.

Without looking at her, Castillo said, "Wait."

She sat down.

With real regret, Rico left.

 

She crossed her ankles and closed her hands on her purse. If only she didn't feel like a child in front of the principal.

He still did not look at her. "I'm not going to ask if you know how to use this."

It probably wasn't a compliment. It certainly didn't require an answer.

"Is this it?"

"I have a permit for the other. It's a Smith and Wesson, thirty-eight, and I keep it where the kids can't get at it."

He nodded, briefly. "Seven o'clock tonight."

Jordan opened her mouth. After consideration, she shut it.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing."

He looked at her. Flat black eyes, unreadable.

"I just wondered if stakeouts or whatever were in your job description."

His face changed. The eyes, all at once, had an expression of just-on-the-edge-laughter. "I know my job."

"That's not what I meant." Terrific. She just _loved_ being the bloody comic relief.

No change in the expression.

"Seven o'clock," she said. "I'll ready."

"I'll bring this then." He put her gun in his coat pocket and opened the door for her.

And that was that.

 

"Mrs. Connelly?" Consuela stood at the bottom of the stairs, hands on her hips.

Jordan dragged a box out of the bedroom, sat down on the top step of the uncarpeted stairs, and began to sift the box's contents. "Where the hell did I put those shoes? Yes, Consuela?"

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?" She stood up. "I _know_ I had those damn gold shoes _some_ where—" She pulled the box off into the bedroom and chose another from the collection dug out of the attic. This one also came to the head of the stairs, and she peered into it.

What I mean is that you have been up and down these stairs twenty times since you returned this afternoon, and six times you have been into the attic, bringing down boxes—to find one pair of shoes."

"Oh," Jordan pulled out a pair of French-heeled black leather pumps. "So that's where _those_ went. I wondered. It's a long story, Consuela—"

Promptly, her housekeeper sat down on the lowest step, looking up. "Since you told me not to fix your dinner, there is nothing on the stove."

"Uh, yeah." Jordan did not exactly laugh. "This problem we discussed earlier, the one that l'm giving information to the police on—" No matter how she phrased this, she had a feeling it was going to give her difficulty. "l'm going out with one of the officers tonight. To look for someone."

"One of these criminals?

"Yes."

"Who is this man you are going out with?"

"Why do you think it's a man?"

Consuela's laugh rippled across the room and vanished. "Would you be looking for your gold shoes if it were a woman?"

Jordan set the black shoes aside. "No."

"What is he like?"

"I don't really know. He's the Lieutenant—in charge of the department. Last name Castillo."

"Cubano?"

"Lord, Consuela, I never asked. He _is_ Latino."

The conversation, at least on Consuela's part, immediately dropped into Spanish. "Cubano men, they are good husbands—but much better as lovers—"

Nip that one off real fast. "No, _no_ , Consuela. This is business. Strictly business."

The expression on her housekeeper's face said that she took no stock in that at all.

"No, really." Which box had she put those shoes in? They weren't in this one either. She wouldn't have thrown them out. "It's only business, Consuela. He's all business. Wouldn't notice me as female if I stripped in his office." The image, after today's encounter, struck her as hysterically incongruous. Jordan threw her head back and laughed. She could just see it. He might just raise his eyebrows—if he looked at her at all. More likely, she'd receive no more than a pained, disapproving silence. No, how silly, of course he'd— "Probably hand me his _coat_."

A pause; Consuela registered the comment. Then, with a simple unassailable logic, the younger woman said, "But you would like him to notice you."

"Consuela." Jordan stood up to drag this box away. "I'm a widow." She brought out the last possible box.

The silent figure on the stairs stirred, smoothing her cotton-candy pink skirt. Consuela insisted on uniforms—even though what her housekeeper wore mattered very little to Jordan—but Jordan insisted on providing the cost of the uniforms. In an odd tone, at once maternal and diffident, Consuela said, "Si, Señora. Your husband, he is dead. So is mine. But you and I, Señora, we are alive. And we grieve for them, but we must live too. And your life, it is not— Señora, it is not reasonable not to want a man."

"I've wanted men." Swinging her bare foot back and forth, Jordan added, "I've had men since Alan died."

It is not the same thing," was the firm reply.

She started to speak, impatiently, then stopped. Finally, she admitted, "You're right. It isn't."

"And this man?"

"Irritates the hell out of me." She gestured widely and helplessly. "And I don't know why."

"Because he pretends not to notice you."

"It's not pretense."

The maternal note returned. "Señora, any man who would not notice you is not a man."

"I'm Anglo. Maybe I'm not his type."

"You want him to notice you?"

Jordan sighed. "Yeah, well—"

The long black hair bounced vigorously. "Then you should consider how he has seen you up until now."

"In business clothes, naturally."

"He will expect you to be muy práctico, then, or go to an extreme, like most Anglo women who want to be sexy. You need to be what he doesn't expect. Feminine."

Jordan stood up. "Oh, wait a minute. I can't go out with a copper on business, looking like I _am_ the business. And you haven't met this fellow. He'd make a brick wall look like an emotional wreck. I'll just look silly. It won't work."

"It will."

"It won't." Jordan tapped her foot against the wooden floor. "I won't be ridiculous, Consuela. I hate being laughed at." She added grimly, "He's already gotten his laughs out of me."

"He won't."

"He will. Maybe not aloud.

He won't react to it."

"He will."

She threw up her hands. "Oy vey. All right. If he reacts, you and the kids get dinner on me."

"It's a deal," Consuela said in English.

"You've been listening to your son again. And speaking of Raul, it's five to five. Isn't he picking you up tonight?"

"Sí," and the younger woman departed in a swirl of black hair and pink polyester.

Jordan dug hopelessly through the box and produced a pair of gold pumps. She looked at them. "Feminine. God—if you're up there—give me strength, eh?' With a long sigh, she got up to go rummage through the closets.

 

Tugging at the collar of the Victorian lace blouse, Jordan remembered that she'd packed it away because tight collars choked her. In the kitchen mirror, she checked her hair one more time, wondering if the combs would really hold the coil up. "I look like something out of a Gibson Girl illustration," she said to the mirror. "I can't. l've got fifteen minutes. I will go change."

The doorbell rang. She swung around. "Can't be. It's only six-forty—"

But when she opened the door, there was Castillo, bigger than life and half as natural (paraphrasing _Alice_ ), standing on the stoop in his usual black suit.

His eyes lifted, and he looked at her. Actually looked at her and paused on a breath.

"You're early," she said. It sounded accusing.

"If you aren't ready, I'll wait."

Did he have to sound so polite when she was being bitchy? "No. I'm ready. She took the challis shawl that matched her skirt from the chair and draped it over her arm. "Anytime you are, Lieutenant."

He held the doors for her. They set off in silence. He drove without hurry, down a highway lined with blue water and palm trees. The trees stood out in bas-relief against the sunset. An old ache tugged at her heart.

"Calling me 'Lieutenant' in this situation isn't a good idea," he said.

A point. "All right. What do you suggest?"

Castillo replied mildly, "My name is Martin."

She arranged the shawl around her shoulders. "Whatever you say—Martin. My name you already know. Whether or not you use it is entirely up to you."

Did he actually smile? Nah. Probably shadows.

"Is there a reason you don't use your first name?" His question sounded innocuous. Jordan glanced at him, at what she could see in the twilight and the streetlights, and decided that nothing about Lieutenant Martin Castillo was innocuous.

"I don't like my first name." She figured it was close enough to the truth to hold him.

He nodded briefly. Tonight we try the _Inamorata_."

Closing her eyes, she mentally retrieved the list she'd memorized, of the restaurants and nightclubs that fit the criteria she'd given him. The _Inamorata_ had been third from the top. "Okay. Why is it called that?"

His head turned, just slightly, and then he said, "I believe it's the owner's name."

"Oh," The car turned left, then right. "Good."

Now she was sure his mustache twitched. Jordan rubbed the back of her neck, then smoothed the openwork cuffs. Damn. She owed Consuela dinner.

 

The council of war—if it could be called that—happened on Sonny's boat. Away from superior officers and strangers. Gina brought a bottle. So did Rico. Trudy supplied glasses, and enough crackers to keep the four of them reasonably stuffed.

"Why Switek and Zito on the surveillance?" demanded Sonny. He sounded reasonably wasted. "And only tailing? No wire?"

The two women glanced at each other.

Rico said, "Maybe he's going to be saying things to her he doesn't want us to hear."

Sonny snorted.

Gina said, "Maybe he thinks she might notice a wire and get jumpy."

"Oh, come on." Sonny leaned forward to gesture with his half-emptied glass. "Listen, I know a little about mercs. This lady sat in some expensively furnished villa in Johannesburg with servants to dial the phone for her while her husband—if he was her husband—slogged around shooting up native villages. What she knows about surveillance is shit."

She put you on the floor pretty fast," Trudy commented.

"Beginner's luck." Sonny refilled his glass.

Trudy glanced at Gina.

"Listen." Rico munched on a cracker. "If you two know something, then let us in on it."

Gina sighed. "We don't know anything, Rico."

"So what do you think?"

Trudy rubbed behind her ear. "We aren't paid to think."

"Ladies, please—" Sonny folded both hands around his glass. "I promise. I'll be quiet."

We went through the pictures at her place, to come up with that one of Dutch. Pictures she took, right?" Trudy swallowed more wine. "Well, she says they were old pictures, said she wasn't much of a photographer—"

Gina smiled. "Quote—I'm not much cop as a photographer—unquote. Then turned red and told us it was British slang, right? A lot of 'em were taken in the jungle. Like all those Tarzan movies? Only this looked real."

"And," continued Trudy, "when Gina found the picture of Dutch, she not only IDs him, she tells us he'd shot a wild boar that morning and that _they_ ate well that campaign."

"Maybe he came to visit," suggested Sonny.

They looked at each other again. Trudy went on, "When she first said what he did, she said he was an interrogator and an assassin. She said he really got into his work. As if she'd seen it. Not as if she'd have let the guy into her house."

Rico frowned. "You ever call up those records again.

This time, Trudy Joplin looked down at her hands. Then she said, "Not officially. The Lieutenant's being kinda funny about this one."

Repeating an earlier comment, Rico muttered, "Castillo is strange."

"Yeah," Gina contributed. "But I looked at those unofficial records. They've been~-what did you say, Trudy?"

"Edited. Somebody's made some corrections. The marriage and the passports and all that—they were added in later. It's really skillfully done, but you can tell from some of the dates. They're never listed as living anywhere but in Capetown. And there's one notation of a national revenue return listing Alan Connelly as a South African Government employee. Civil Servant; that's the report."

"What's she listed as?"

Gina broke in. "Geologist. Free-lance. And student."

"Anyway," Trudy said, "so Gina called Switzerland."

Sonny sat up. "From the office?"

"Are you crazy? From my home, of course." Gina emptied the first bottle. "And I talked to a Constable Lutern. He says that Alan Connelly was murdered nine months ago, and that the subsequent investigation pointed to one Marchon Choucheaux, who was later arrested in Cornwall, but was killed trying to escape. He says he just started six months ago and doesn't know the details. Polite, but nothing more." She leaned back. "And that's it."

"Except for the fact that she didn't let us into the house right away," Trudy added. "Stood at the door and called her housekeeper's name. It wasn't more than like five seconds, but she waited until she got an answer before walking in."

"So what are you saying?" Sonny said acting dense. "That she's something weird herself?"

"We're saying," Gina told him, smacking him on the shoulder, "that maybe the Lieutenant has his reasons. Maybe she's more dangerous than we think."

Rico, with one finger tapping his lower lip, said, "And maybe she's more deeply involved here than it seems?"

"Maybe," said Trudy.

"You two think she's straight?" Sonny asked.

Now they didn't look at each other. Then, on the same breath, they both said, "Yeah," before glancing at each other in obvious astonishment.

"I thought you thought," Gina began.

"Well, you said—"

"Yeah, but—"

Okay, okay," interrupted Sonny. "Save the chorus for later. Why do you think she's straight?"

A long pause.

"Don't tell me it's instinct?"

Gina sounded belligerent. "And you got something against instinct, Crockett?"

"l've got something against civilian ladies who carry guns. In holsters."

"You," Trudy said dryly, "have got something against civilian ladies who knock you flat on your ass in the middle of the conference room."

"Thanks. Just because she takes advantage of me doesn't mean she can handle herself on stakeout."

Rico's tone threaded amusement through his words. "I think the Lieutenant can make up for that." He glanced at the two female detectives. "So what do you two think of her?

"You mean personally?" asked Gina.

"Yeah."

Silence again. Trudy said, "I think she's real concerned about these two—Fox and Dutch—running loose in Miami. I think she's tired."

Gina added, "I think she loved this guy of hers a lot."

Trudy nodded.

The other woman went on, "And I think she's still hurting. More than it shows."

"And it shows," Trudy murmured.

Sonny killed the second bottle. "So what do you think we ought to do?"

"Well," Rico rocked back and forth, rolling his empty glass between his palms, "with the proper persuasion, careful collection of data, and the right presentation of the facts—"

"Lieutenant Castillo will still do as he damn well pleases," Gina broke in.

"Yeah. Right."

"If it's any consolation, though," the Spanish-Italian woman continued, "I don't think she's any happier about working with us than we are about working with her. There's one difference."

"Yeah?" Sonny squinted suspiciously at her.

"She's more polite about it than we are."

"Yeah. Well, you just wait. Something'll get on her nerves and she'l1 turn out to have teeth and claws."

"Hey," Rico said. "So what are we gonna do about this?"

"What do you think?" Gina stared at him.

"Nothing."

"Jou got it, mon," Sonny grunted, and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

 

The _Inamorata_ smelt of candle wax and incense. The food odors stayed just on the edge of tangibility. Jordan glanced around as the maitre d' led them to a table. A little like the place Fox had taken her to when Alan was out on work that once.

That is, it was one of those carefully arranged places where the only way to see another party was to stand up and stare.

She nibbled at her food, pushing it around on her plate. At least they did have a clear view of the door. "What if this doesn't work?" She hadn't meant to say it.

Castillo looked at her. "Then we'll try something else."

"Sorry. Stupid question."

"What else do you know about them?"

She met his eyes for a second, then focussed on her plate. "Like what did you have in mind?"

"Aside from expensive nightclubs, what would they use to relax?"

Jordan tore a croissant apart and ate it fragment by fragment. "If there's a legit masseuse in town, Fox would find him or her. Not a health club. Very private man. Dutch—I don't think Fox would let Dutch out alone if at all possible. Alan had to pay off a brothel or two too many in South Africa." She frowned. "Come to think of it, I'm not sure that Dutch would be welcome in South Africa any longer."

"You do sound as if you knew them pretty well."

She stopped in the middle of a bite, swearing silently, then chewed the meat thoroughly before swallowing, trying to give herself some dismissing answer. "I learned to listen. Men talk, after all. Most of the time you can hardly shut them up. After a while, a woman learns to separate the wheat from the chaff."

That odd, unnerving look of amusement crossed his face again.

Jordan frowned and concentrated on the meal and the door. The background music distracted her as it grew louder, and she cast an irritated glance at the small, formally-dressed band. It was a nightclub, of course. Why she'd picked it. Fox and Alan had both liked dancing.

The dance floor had good vantage—she wasn't going to suggest it. Not bloody likely.

And when he did, she froze, too taken aback to even notice his words, just hearing the intent.

"I don't dance very well."

With that quietly sardonic note his voice, Martin Castillo said, "I doubt anyone will notice."

He did dance well. She should have expected it.

She didn't expect to enjoy it.

She didn't want to enjoy it.

"I don't See him," she said, stepping back from the policeman.

"Have you had time to look?"

Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Are you calling me a liar?" she said, sharply, in automatic defense. He was getting too damn close, in too damn many ways.

Martin Castillo raised both eyebrows, but took her back to the table.

She gave up on eating. It was a vastly overrated activity, anyway. The teacup gave her something to fiddle with.

"Did Fox use any aliases that you know of?" Polite, but persistent.

"No." Jordan tried not to sound Curt. It failed

Not too much later, Castillo paid the tab and they left.

In the car, she said, "Look, this isn't going to work. l'd rather go around on this with someone else."

He didn't even react. All he said was, "No."

Stunned again, she spoke before thinking. "Why not?"

"My decision," was the only response.

"I thought the States was a democracy."

Absolutely imperturbable, he answered, "It is. I have veto power."

Totalitarian. "Then you can go on with this by yourselves. l'm sure l'm not much help." It sounded spiteful. And childish. She could almost see Alan shaking his head at her, and set her jaw grimly.

The man sitting beside her said nothing at all.

The entire trip home passed in silence.

At the house, he got out to open her door. He walked her to the stoop, still without a word. After she unlocked the doors, glanced around, and stepped inside, Martin Castillo did speak.

"Seven o'clock," he said. "Tomorrow night."

And turned around and left.

Jordan stood there, staring after him. As he started to get into the car, she said, "Chingemadre jurado!" in the gutter Spanish Raul used when he didn't think she was listening. Then she slammed the door. Hard.

It didn't do anything effective. But it relieved her frustration.

It did not help that she fell asleep almost immediately.

 

She sat up, swinging her legs off the bed, shaking her head and trying to figure out what had wakened her.

It buzzed again.

Doorbell.

In the dark, she fumbled for the intercom. Finding the switch by touch, she pressed it and said, "Yes?"

"Mrs. Connelly?" The voice started to go on, but Jordan was startled enough to interrupt.

"Detective Calabrese?"

"Yes. Could we speak to you, please?"

At three in the morning. Jordan said, "Just a minute," and switched off the security system before grabbing her robe and running down the stairs.

Both of them, the Latino woman and her black partner, stood there. They looked bone-weary.

"Come in." She stepped back from the door.

They walked tired, even.

"I think we're all aware of what time it is," Jordan said, "but I will ask what's wrong."

'There's been another." Gina rubbed her eyes.

"Another what?"

Trudy sighed. "Robbery. Lieutenant wants you to come take a look at it."

Words rushed up, and she pushed them back. They came out here to get her, to take her to a robbery scene .... "Give me a minute to get some clothes on. It must be bad. "Why don't you both sit down? You look a little tired."

She came back down in jeans and khaki blouse, sitting on the lowest step to tie her Nikes.

"Is it as bad as that, or did you both not get much sleep?"

"Yes," was Gina's answer.

Jordan raised both eyebrows and waited.

Trudy added, "To both."

"Lovely." Jordan stood up.

 

It was a warehouse, nothing more. A warehouse currently surrounded with flashing lights and police officers in shortsleeved uniforms. Her escorts identified themselves, and took her inside, where Jordan stopped to look around.

Boxes, naturally. A couple had hazard warnings stencilled on their sides.

Trudy led the way to a small glassed-in office.

This time Jordan stopped out of something other than simple curiosity.

Blood spattered the walls and the glass. She stepped inside, vaguely aware of Lieutenant Castillo talking to another suit-clad man. There were three bodies here—two men in security guard uniforms, and another man in t-shirt and blue jeans. Man. The third one was no more than seventeen. Not much older than Raul.

Her stomach kicked. She swallowed hard. Not much help She drew in a long breath of air, and held it, then exhaled slowly. That was better. Try it again.

One of the guards had a sheet thrown across him, and something projected upwards from it. She frowned, trying to deduce from the shape what it was. A brown hand came into her view, dragging the sheet back.

Half of a jagged-edged knife thrust upwards from the terrible gash. The rest of it, hilt and six inches of blade, lay next to the dead man.

Jordan gagged.

Bodies all over the hut—women, men, children—jumbles of arms and legs, and Dutch standing in the middle of the bloody floor, Uzi cradled in one arm and that damned knife dangling between the fingers of the other hand. Alan's voice rose behind her, vibrating with rage.

"What in the bleedin' hell did you think you were doing?"

And Dutch laughed at him.

Dutch laughed—

A hand dropped on her shoulder. She flinched.

"Jordan."

Gina's voice.

"I'm all right," she lied. "Just give me a minute. I'm fine."

The bodies were still there when she turned, but at least her stomach had promised to behave itself. Fox wouldn't have let Dutch do this. It meant he had let Dutch out alone. And he should have known better—

"Why should he have known better?"

This voice made her react. Naturally. Castillo had both hands tucked into his pants pocket, and was staring at her.

"Nobody who ever worked with Dutch would let him get free rein. You couldn't trust the nutter to follow any orders unless you had him in eyeview—And Fox knew that. I don't understand it. I don't understand it!"

Castillo studied her, then nodded. "That's all. Wait outside."

Somehow she got into the relatively clean air of Miami's downtown. Miami, even at night, was warm. She felt chilled clear to the bone, and dropped into a crouch instinctively, rocking back and forth, toes to heels.

If he could let Dutch do that, if he could let Dutch handle a raid knowing what would come of it—Fox wasn't the man she'd known. Not the man who found her sick while Alan was on a job and nursed her through a high fever.

You told Bodie you'd changed. That everybody changed. Why don't you want Fox to have changed? She stood slowly, rubbing a cramp in the back of her knee. Because if he's changed that much, he's too dangerous to live. Especially here. Especially in America.

"Mrs. Connelly?"

Lieutenant Castillo. She wrapped her arms around herself, as she turned, shivering in the night air. She hated to see night come.

"How many men do you think were involved in this?" he asked.

She ran a hand through her hair "In the killing? Probably Dutch himself."

Castillo studied the ground.

Any idea what was taken?" she said.

"Not yet."

"If enough goods were needed—maybe one or two men for loading. But he wouldn't have let them near the area where he was questioning the—" Watch the phrasing. "Victims."

"Questioning.

"Yes, Didn't I—no, I didn't. l'm sorry. It's the kind of technique—" Her stomach revolted again and she paused to fight down the nausea. "It's not just killing, although that dictated the method. He was interrogating them. I'd guess he wanted something in particular and didn't want to shuffle through the boxes."

He said nothing more, and she stared at the warehouse.

"You've got to catch them," she heard herself say.

Castillo looked at her.

"They can't be allowed to do this. It's not right. They can't do this and get away with it. You have to stop them."

After a second, he said, "We will. I'll have Detective Calabrese take you home."

Home. 'To sleep, perchance to dream'— Aloud, she murmured, "But in that sleep, who knows what dreams may come?" and turned away.


	4. Chapter 4

March 20, 1986

When the doorbell rang, Jordan paused to smooth her stockings before starting downstairs to answer it. Consuela's voice floated up the stairs.

Consuela? At six-twenty? Jordan noted to herself that the man was even earlier tonight, and if this were a trend, he'd be showing up on her doorstep at the crack of dawn by the probable end of this mess. She also noted that Consuela had somehow managed to hang around till long past quitting time, and although she appreciated concern, still to everything there was a limit.

Jordan spared a glance for the clothing on her bed. Upon seeing the Victorian blouse and challis skirt, Consuela had been first horrified, and then entertained. _Well, how was I to know that I had dressed like a girl he'd take home to Mamma? Hell, I'm white, and Jewish, and my mother told me that was the way nice girls dressed. On the other hand, a nice girl means something different to a Latino, I daresay._

As she descended the stairs, she saw Consuela playing maid to the hilt, doing the polite Madam-will-be-with-you-shortly routine in Cuban, and the tilt of her dark-haired head saying that she was checking out the caller.

Lieutenant Castillo would probably be choking on his sense of humor.

Consuela started off for the kitchen, and Jordan said, very quietly, "Consuela."

The smaller woman turned, and flushed. Guilty. "Sí, Señora?"

"Might I speak with you in the kitchen?" To Castillo, barely paying him attention, Jordan said, "Just a second, please."

Consuela retreated, and stood in the kitchen, looking as recalcitrant and sulky as an untamed horse. Jordan shut the door.

"Here's money for the cab," Jordan said, pulling a twenty out of her purse and handing it to her housekeeper.

Floods of Spanish. No, she'd take the bus, it wasn't far to walk, she wasn't interfering—

"Consuela."

Silence.

More gently, feeling less annoyed, Jordan said, "I'm not angry. Much. However, I will not have you walking to the bus. It is too far, the road's badly lit, and it is too dangerous. If you will insist on acting as my duenna, then you will have to accept the fact that I will send you home in a cab. And tell you not to show up until ten o'clock on Thursday. And I won't take any argument, comprende?"

A frown, but Consuela said, "Sí."

Jordan nodded. "Will you call or shall I?"

"I will call."

"Fine. I'll go collect my guest."

 

Martin Castillo took advantage of Jordan's absence. Obviously she had no idea of the house's acoustics, since the conversation in the kitchen came through with enough clarity to make out the subject and tone, if not all the wording. He surveyed the front room.

It was a large rectangular room, with an L-shaped addition that led to the kitchen set off by the curving staircase and its balustrade of enameled lilies. A floor to ceiling mural of an art nouveau lily covered the wall next to the staircase. The living room itself was sunken, the floor marble covered in places by oriental rugs. The white walls added height and width to an already large room. He felt the decor a little odd—no French Royalty, no art deco trendy—just large, solid, square pieces in muted tropical tones. And there were only a few pieces, too: a cherrywood credenza, a peacock blue sectional, a low cherrywood coffee table currently covered with an open photo album and a china teaset. One cup had been used. Limoges. Trained to have good taste, and the money to back it up.

The right album page had been covered by a letter, written on thick cheap paper in an angular, schoolboyish hand. With malice aforethought, Castillo picked it up.

No paragraph indentations. Punctuation none-too-accurate. Some of the letters and lines shaky and slanting, as if written in a moving vehicle on a none-too-stable surface. Remembering that Alan Connelly had been a mercenary, Martin suspected the tailgate of a truck.

 

Farie, ameni—  
Thinking about you last night, love, out here in the bush. I cant say where, not that I need to tell you that, but I know Mick will get this to you. Looks as if we'll be chasing the rainbow a bit longer than I told you, give us another fortnight or thereabouts.  
Your last letter kept me going. This ones no bank holiday, but you mustnt worry because Ive got me rabbits foot, havent I and your poems in me shirt pocket and if that wont stop anything short of silver nothing will.  
Last night in Capetown I wouldn't trade for a year in a Shanghai house of joy. I still remember the way the moonlight tasted on your skin, ameni, and the way the sunlight gilded your hair—  
I can't make this long, the boys and me need to kip down a while. I'll be with you sooner than it seems now, and shall do apologies right for leaving you. I've promised you Switzerland. No Kilimanjaros there, but the Alps will please you, and I shall teach you to keep goats.

Alan     

 

In the kitchen, the conversation halted. Martin put the letter down and walked unhurriedly to the far side of the room, where the gold curtains covered French doors leading out onto a patio. One of the doors stood open, showing a traditional sunken garden with frangipani, jasmine, and transplanted bird-of-paradise arranged around a small pond. Goldfish, most likely.

Behind him, Jordan said, "There were goldfish when I took the place I considered piranha, but decided it would be a bit silly."

He turned to look at her. Cloth-of-gold and her ruddy hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. She looked—extremely expensive. Hard to recognize as the woman from last night. In his head, he scanned the memorized list and picked out a different restaurant. Nightclub.

With her brief comment regarding the _Inamorata_ , it would be interesting to see what she made of a place called _Dancing Undercover_.

 

As they neared the northern bridge off Miami Beach, Jordan said, "I want to apologize for my behavior last night."

He looked at her. In profile, her chin looked stubborn and sharp. She sounded like someone doing something unpleasant.

"I shouldn't have imposed my bad temper and snap judgement on you," she continued.

Blunt. Martin considered it briefly, then said, "You're right You shouldn't have."

Her head jerked around, and she eyed him with what first seemed like surprise, and then gradually turned into amusement. "It won't happen again."

"Good."

Something expressive and short escaped her—not quite a laugh. "You could pretend to be ignorant of my meaning and say nothing had happened."

"When you asked to help, you took on a responsibility. Don't ask for that unless you're willing to follow through."

"Mmf," was her response this time.

After a second, she added, in a somewhat different tone, "I find myself mixing responsibility and pleasure these days. It's hard to get back into old habits." There was a longer pause. Now she sounded hardened and bitterly mature. "I was a mercenary's wife. I ought to know better."

"You have to let the past go," he said.

"Do you find it that easy?" Jordan's voice struck as quickly and neatly as a stiletto. It took him aback a moment, and in that moment, she said, "l'm sorry. Forget it, please."

"No," Castillo said.

Her head turned again, and her face took on that assessing blankness he remembered. She apparently caught both meanings in his answer.

He expected further questions. Even from her.

Jordan Connelly nodded, once, and turned back to the windshield. "Where is it tonight?"

"Dancing Undercover."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Dancing Undercover," he reiterated, feeling a smile slip out.

Looking straight ahead, she said in voice like a dry martini, "I see. And do they use satin sheets for tablecloths?"

He caught nine-tenths of the laugh before it escaped his throat. When he had his throat and his emotions back under control, Martin said, "I've never been there. We'll see."

Jordan chuckled. Very low, almost a purr.

 

"Someone had constructed an artificial sand dune for the club. The structure itself presumably was sand on cement. Inside, stained-glass skylights lent the illusion of both cavern and twilight. One far wall held a miniature waterfall with its own pool and collection of water-lilies.

He saw the tension in her shoulders relax. She looked around herself and sighed a little. Martin moved forward and rested his hand on her arm. When she glanced up, he shifted the grip to the inside of her arm, where her skin felt smooth and warm and the muscles lay in long trained patterns.

Under this light she looked somber again.

"At the reception, you were telling Crockett and Tubbs a joke," he said. "What was it?"

She looked down, flushing. "It was silly. Murphy will make Yank jokes, and I figured he needed a bit of his own back."

"l'd like to hear it."

She picked up her teacup and swirled the amber liquid. Her Voice took on a clipped BBC tone. "Well, it seems there was a plane, with only four people aboard—the pilot, a C15 man, a priest, and a Boy Scout." As she went on, her voice took on different accents: Scots for the pilot, Birmingham for the agent, Irish for the priest and a thick Cockney for the boy. Her face lit, telling him the story, all her attention on him, on his reactions—such as they were—to what she told him, slightly exaggerating the things he seemed to like and downplaying when he frowned.

As if she derived pleasure from an audience.

From him.

He knew the punchline. He could see it coming. But she gave it to him, wide-eyed, with a cynical Cockney, a grin, and her hands spread out. And he gave her a smile.

Jordan flushed again, and looked down.

Truce.

"You said you mother was in a a nursing home here?"

She glanced at him, under her lashes. "I'd have thought you had that information."

"Medical information, unless vital to a case, is not available to even police officers."

"Oh," She picked up her fork, then put it down with care. "I—forget that there are places in the world where privacy is not a privilege." This apology came out more oblique. "And that there are policemen who consider civilians' rights."

"I never forget."

That got him the sidelong look again, appraising but good-humored.

"Yes," she said. "I can see that."

The waiter arrived, setting plates down with economical grace. Once he left, Jordan went on with the conversation.

"Mother has MS. She decided she wanted to die as she hadn't lived. So I found her a nursing home that keeps kosher."

Martin looked at her. Your file doesn't say that you're Jewish."

A pause. "l'm not." She shrugged. "Or, at least, Mother is, so I suppose ethnically I am. But Father gave up on God after leaving Poland in the nineteen-thirties, and would never let Mother teach me the rituals. I'm not Jewish. I daresay I'm not anything."

A quick memory of his mother and Mass on Sunday flared up and disappeared. He said nothing.

Reflectively, she told him, "It's a little harder when there aren't any rules to go by, when you have to work on situations. I think I would have preferred being Jewish." She shrugged. "But by the time I had the choice, I was too busy being a student." A quick frown. "And it's a good thing it wasn't in my files when I went to Cape Town. Jews and South Africa don't quite mix."

"What did you think of South Africa?"

Jordan finished her tea and poured another cup. "I remember the color of the water. Not like here. It was a green, somedays rather greyish, but some mornings, early, a color like jade, Very deep and ancient. And the air did smell of salt, like Miami, but there wasn't much of modern technology in it. I read once that originally we all came from Africa. The air was like that. Like a cradle." She flushed again. "I'm sorry. I get fanciful sometimes."

"I don't mind." When she spoke out of memory, her expression changed, abstracted and dreaming.

Her eyes darkened, like the color of the oceans in her words.

Her gaze disfocussed again. "I—was happy. If there are enough good times, anything is bearable. We left after the riots in seventy-six. Alan said he was no angel, but he'd be—" she coughed, "before he'd help commit genocide." In a lower voice, a little embarrassed, she added, "Besides, it made me unhappy."

"He worked for the government there?"

Sometimes." Jordan shrugged. "Enough to keep his visas palatable to the brass." Now, firmer, she said, "I've talked enough. Your turn."

He looked at her, weighing it. "About what?"

"I don't know. Tell me—tell me what I've missed since nineteen-eighty. I stopped reading the papers when I had to wade through diatribes to find the news."

"You knew about Carter, then."

"Yes, and Nixon. Actually, I rather liked Carter. He seemed like a nice country boy." A quirky smile came and went. "I like nice boys."

Right. "Then Reagan came in." Some of this had happened before he left Thailand. He told her what he did know.

She gave him all her attention not speaking, just listening. Absorbing.

A strange voice interrupted them. "Jordan?"

Martin saw her face change, disbelief chased by wariness fading into that noncommittal lack of expression. She twisted, and the smile looked as sincere as the rest of her emotions.

"Fox!"

The older man smiled in return, a smile that never made it to his tilted dark eyes. His white hair clung sleekly to his head. Martin guessed sixty as an age.

When Fox spoke, it was not in English. Considering the evidence, most likely Afrikaans. Jordan answered him in the same language, and even though Alan Connelly's name was clearly understandable, the rest of it was not.

Castillo put a hand on her arm, and she turned.

"Hablad ingles, chica."

Her understanding of Spanish apparently passed that—he saw her eyes go gold with anger. Then, just as suddenly , the anger vanished, and her entire face lit up with a smile, something real and so intense it felt like a physical force.

"Perdóname, jefe," she said. "Fox, l've been reminded of my manners."

Fox's hard dark eyes seemed less than impressed.

"Martín, my friend—"

"Kent Fox," the older man supplied, offering a hand.

"Martin Santoyo," said Castillo, standing to take the hand. No need to be less than formally courteous. Yet.

"I apologize," said Fox, "for the interruption. I knew Jordan and her husband some years ago. Could I borrow her for a few minutes?"

Jordan rolled her eyes.

Martin, repressively, said, "That's up to the lady."

It got him her assessing look, and then a shadow of that high-wattage smile. "Thank you, darling. I shan't be long." As she walked away, she touched his shoulder, lightly, with her fingertips.

He watched them at the bar: Jordan with one hip half-against a stool, Fox leaning on the bar and still towering over her. She had arranged their positions so that Fox faced him. The older man looked concerned, baffled, and finally determined. In less than five minutes, Fox escorted her back to the table, made polite noises, and left.

Jordan sipped her tea. "Not here," she said. "I'll tell you about it in the car."

Martin tracked Fox by eyesight, noticing that the man did not leave, but sat at a table within visual range of theirs.

Finish dinner then, as if nothing had occurred.

Even though her expression said otherwise.

 

"May I roll the window down?" Jordan pulled off one high-heeled gold pump and began to massage her foot. Hadn't worn heels that high in three or four years, and it felt like it

"Yes."

Sea-flavored air gusted in through the quarter-open window. She spoke over the echo, not loudly but clearly. "I don't know what the objective is, but Fox offered me a job."

The Lieutenant did not look at her. His hands tightened on the wheel. "As what?"

Jordan took a breath. Oh, damn. Truth or consequences time again. "As a tactician."

Now she got one quick look; she caught it out of the corner of her eye.

"Is that what Alan trained you to do?"

"Yeah."

He left it, wonder of wonders. "Why offer you the job?"

Jordan propped her elbow on the window ledge and stared out the glass while she spoke, to keep herself from laughing. "He thinks you're keeping me."

A pause. "Did you give him that impression?"

"I told him the truth. No one keeps me. I stay or I go on my own recognizance ."

"But he didn't believe you."

Yeah, well— Aloud, she said, "You gave me an order. I took it." She shrugged again. Almost funny. "In time I can disabuse him of the idea."

"Don't."

Jordan twisted to look at him. His profile was frankly uncommunicative.

He didn't directly answer. "The situation has changed."

"That's for damn sure."

"What would be your next step?"

"To meet him for preliminary negotiations," she said. Hearing Alan instruct her. "If I'm any good at all, I'm too good to be bought on first offer. He said he'd give me a call in a couple of days, to set a meet."

"Can you wear a wire?"

Jordan frowned, trying to remember if there'd ever been any information about wires. "Like a radio? I'm not familiar with what you mean."

He described a wire, and she visualized it, growing more and more uneasy. Finally she shook her head.

"I can't guarantee that Fox wouldn't search me. This is`a civilized country, not Africa. If he had anyone else with him, they might very likely insist. And if he caught me with a wire, I wouldn't walk out." She felt a shudder ripple up her spine. "I wouldn't friggin' _crawl_."

A longer pause. "Tell him you have a partner. Tell him if he buys you, he buys your partner."

It took her a minute. In sheer outrage, her voice rose an octave. " _You_? Have you flipped?"

Castillo's head turned, and she got an inimical smouldering glare.

This was two lives in the balance. She would not be intimidated. "Listen, I don't know why he didn't make you from the first. You look like a copper, you smell like a copper, you act—most of the time—like a copper. If I bring you in, we both get blown. And I'm rather fond of living—" When had that come into it? How long had she been moping about waiting for an accident? And now, all at once, the idea of dying frightened her. A little shaken, she hunted for a new argument.

"You're not going in without backup.

Like talking to hear yourself talk. "If I don't go in, you've lost him."

No answer. As if she'd answered it.

Jordan felt the rage beginning to spread through her body, pressing against her brain. She took a long breath. It didn't help. "Damn it! I can't take you in with me. It's too risky. Fox is a professional. I'm a professional. I know what I'm dealing with and I know the rules!"

"So do I." Quiet and permitting no appeal.

"Prove it!" Did it again, bloody clever, lost your cool completely. He won't take you seriously if you lose it.

But Castillo didn't answer. Just like the other night, when he drove her home—as he did now—and walked her up the steps—like now—and no response, not initiation, nada.

At the door, she swung around. "Why the hell can't you trust me to know what I'm doing?"

The eyes scorched like boiling lava. "Trust doesn't go one way."

She opened her mouth, and shut it, and looked at him. Impasse. I can't trust you. I don't know you. I can't trust you because I can't risk it. Finally she unlocked the door and went inside.

He did not follow. She heard him on the flagstones, heard the car pull away.

In the middle of the living room floor, Jordan dropped into a crouch and rocked blindly back and forth. Faces streamed through her memory, men and women and children, all the myriad ways of dealing and receiving death.

"I can't," she whispered. "I can't. Don't ask me. I can face it myself. I can't face anybody else dying—"

Alan, on a white undertaker's slab, his face at long last free of the darkness.

There is no dark side of the moon. It's all dark.

"Alan," she said, and the damned treacherous revolting tears ran down her face one more time. "Alan, I _can't_."

The wide curving stairs led to a short corridor with five doors. Two were to his left, two—staggered—to the right. One lay at the end of the corridor, and the door stood partially open. As he passed the doors, he glanced in: bathroom, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom used as library. The only other place was the end room.

A mirror reflected the door; next to it was a set of French doors. Closed. Nearer the presumed balcony sat an overstuffed lounge. He stepped in.

She slept in the middle of the large rectangular bed, curled into fetal position. A bay window, the Curtains half-open, cast moonlight over her bare shoulders. Two windows, a door, and a mirror: she chose the room for its escape routes. Next to the bed he saw the outline of a door—in range, a nightlight revealed a bathroom.

After a moment, he crossed the room silently and sat slowly down on the lounge. She did not move. He would not have been surprised if she had, but neither was he surprised she went on sleeping.

She stirred briefly, once, then stilled.

He waited.

So suddenly it came unexpected, Jordan Connelly sat up. The cotton sheet fell away from her shoulders, and the moonlight showed that she slept nude. Her breathing sounded harsh and erratic in the silence. Crawling from under the sheets, she fumbled at the end of the bed, and picked up a kimono. After dragging it on, and trying—only once—to belt it with fingers that didn't work, she slid or fell from the edge onto the floor, and knelt with her head resting on the mattress. She slowly pulled herself to her feet and stumbled to the bay window on the right, away from him, and sat there with her forehead pressed against the glass.

Her breathing still sounded rapid. Like unexpressed sobs.

As the heavy hoarse rattling in her throat slowed and stilled, he thought he saw her shoulders tense. The sixth sense he remembered from other days.

She shifted.

Then her body flashed into movement. In mid-air, one arm stretched out.

Head of the bed. Pillow. Gun under pillow?

He met her in the halfway point, seizing her wrist as it disappeared under the pillow. Gunmetal banged against their joined grip. He bore down, pressing on the nerves. Her knees bent, feet moving. The soles of her bare feet went flat against the headboard, giving her purchase. She shoved, jackknifing towards him, rolling their combined forms over in the sheets. He felt cold metal against his hand. Jordan still had the gun in her grip. He twisted over her, thrusting her backwards, using his body as leverage to force her back against the headboard.

She fought him like a snake. Nothing in her body was still; she used her free arm, her feet, her torso, with the obvious purpose of getting free to use the gun.

Once he nearly lost his grip. He shifted, putting the palm of his hand against her chin, bending her head back to keep her still.

Jordan went rigid. The wrist in his hand tightened, as if the hand clenched, and then relaxed. He heard the gun hit the floor. " _Martin_ —" Wrath in the word, and then silence. Beneath him, the long lines of her body, the kimono almost completely off, went limp. "What are you—" The voice faded off.

"Proving a point."

She inhaled. Her voice had no expression. "Let me go."

For a fraction of a second, he realized he did not want to release her. Then he freed her, standing up and stepping back.

Jordan moved in turn, sitting up on the bedside, drawing the kimono around her with dignity. Her back was to him; the long reddish-blonde hair hung in tangles down the cloth.

No more expression lightened her voice. "You've proved your point. I concede. What now?"

"The office. Tomorrow. Nine a.m."

A brief nod. Then, still flat and bland, she said, "Goodnight, Martin."

And Martin Castillo left as silently and expertly as he had arrived.


	5. Chapter 5

March 21, 1986

Briefly, the words on the page blurred. Martin Castillo rubbed his eyes, then refocussed. He spared a corner of his mind to wish that he slept more soundly, before continuing with the paperwork. He wanted the desk clean before today's work started to spill in on it.

A knock on his door interrupted. "Good-morning."

Jordan. He looked up.

Something new each time.

Today it was not only the clothes: olive-drab jeans, khaki blouse not tucked-in, a loose mahogany-colored jacket that would easily conceal a gun, the leather heels of the low ankle boots clicking against the floor as she entered. It was, as well, the way she moved. A lazy grace had crept into the walk; she moved more slowly than previously, and tucked her thumbs into her hip pockets. Skillfully applied cosmetics did not quite conceal the blueish-black smudges of exhaustion under her eyes. the face, as well as the eyes, looked older and harder.

"You're early," he said, repeating her own words. She was, in fact—twenty minutes or so.

A smile, real but guarded, came and went. In the dry tone he remembered, she said, "It's the company I've been keeping." Her voice sounded more like the woman he'd first met: withdrawn and wary.

He motioned to a chair in front of the desk. She sat down, settled back, then crossed her legs, giving an appearance of ease that was not reflected in the rest of her body. He looked down at his reports, and signed a page.

"I've had some computer correlations set up. To see if there are previous robberies fitting our pattern." He glanced up at her, without raising his head, and saw that as she frowned, her face paled a little.

"And some of my people will be checking the work on the street."

She nodded.

"What's the usual procedure?"

For a moment, she did not answer. Then, slowly, she said, "If, as I suspect, you already know a lot of this, why am I repeating it?"

The flare of exasperation died. "Because I need your inside knowledge here with these men."

"Fair enough." Her eyes narrowed, slightly, thoughtfully.

Martin Castillo pulled a steno pad out of his top drawer, and took his pen from his pocket.

"Ever work in Africa?" she said.

"No."

A frown and a shake of her head. "Far East?"

He paused, then gave her the answer. "Yes."

"Fox is half-Japanese," she said, looking at the wall. "His mother, I believe, was an American missionary. I don't really understand all of the mindset. Dutch is just crazy." A pause, and something like a laugh. "I hope I don't have a reason to understand crazy people." Having given him the background, she rested her clasped hands on her knees. "Assuming that whoever they're working for is also not crazy, then there is some logic for acting both as drug dealers and as robbers. Any lists yet on the stolen goods.?"

"Explosive components. Guns. The last one seemed to be a rip-off."

Her head lifted. "Eh?"

"Traced it back to a man we suspect of high-level dealing. The lab people found traces of amphetamines and narcotics in the debris. They may have heisted the inventory of another criminal. We're in the process of checking out the remainder of the boxes."

Her face went blank, and after a second, she rested her chin on one hand, cupping the elbow in the other hand. "That implies some kind of—rivalry?"

"Drug war. Maybe."

"Enforcers, they're acting as, maybe?"

He considered it as he had considered the idea earlier. "One of the investigators brought up the idea. Would they take that sort of job?"

"Oh, yeah, no problem." She frowned. "Still doesn't fit Fox's usual habits. But he'd be—right about sixty-one, I think, and that's a little old to be mucking about in African jungles. So he might have decided to branch out." She chewed on her lower lip. "We were discussing procedure. So far we don't have any facts on subordinates, aside from Dutch."

"You said there might be two or three people at the warehouse to help unload."

"Yeah. Obviously you don't send all your personnel off with one person. Working as an enforcement squad—not less than four total, not more than—" A long pause. "Ten or twelve?"

Sounds reasonable."

She scowled. "Like to know what the hell he needs a tactician for." She shrugged. "Okay. First contact. He said a couple of days. Could be today, could be tomorrow, could be day after. Anything longer than that and we've lost him. He has to make that contact, and he'll probably have some one else call for him. And I refuse the call."

Martin nodded. "Establishing status?"

"Yeah." She started to rub her eyes, then changed the gesture to the bridge of her nose. "He's going to want to know what you do. Not at first, but at second or third contact."

"Call me a close-contact specialist."

A sudden feline quirk of her mouth answered. "An assassin. How appropriate."

"Reasonable under the circumstances?"

Jordan nodded vigorously, and the long braid of hair fell over her shoulder. "Oh, yes. I might have picked up with you after Alan—" no change in voice or expression, just a fraction of a second's pause, "died. Not that it's vitally important, but where did meet?"

"What do you suggest?'

Now the frown stayed. her disfocussed, and she began to hum, softly. Gershwin. _Rhapsody In Blue_. After a moment, she said, "Ever been to London."

"Yes, A few years ago."

"Good." She straightened little. "A couple of blokes I knew—Tony Kerwin and Eddie Danzig—were in the Far East six years ago or so. Kuala Lumpur, I think. Would that fit with anything your itinerary?"

"Yes."

"Good. They could have given us an intro. Would have been about six months past." She raised eyebrow at him.

"Fine."

Jordan sighed. "I did come across some pictures of them, and I'll show them to you so you answer intelligently if asked. Fox didn't know them all that well so that'll help. He did know they worked together." She looked at him. "That way inclined, if you take my meaning."

"I see." Homosexual. He filed it. "Will they cooperate?"

"They died about the time you and I would have met. They can be asked." Behind the dryness this time was the sense of pain again. "After the first contact, he'll probably do some checking. He may have done it already."

"He won't find anything on me."

That got him a look, edged broken glass, before she said, "Okay. And I'll check out." She tapped a finger against her lower lip. "There is one other person I can get to confirm your story."

Martin waited.

"I'm sure Mr. Cowley will be glad to put out a faked watching brief on Martin Santoyo." She spelled the last name, interrogatively, and scribbled it down in the tiny notebook when he nodded. "He'll date it for the appropriate time, and it'll show up when it comes back through. I'll get him to misspell the name, so if Fox has checked, and goes back through, it'll explain the missing data."

"Fine."

"Then. A second meeting, possibly with the jobber—I don't know the protocol here with drug dealers. Whether Fox has carte blanche, or whether he needs approval to bring in outside help. A third meeting if there are any questions. If not, the third meeting would be the actual consultation. He'll give me the objective, give me a deadline, and maybe a little more information. Will that be enough for you?"

He shook his head. "It shows intent. To arrest him, we need to catch him in the act."

"Damn. Well, then I'll set up the objective, contact him as arranged—whatever the arrangements are—and then he'll pull off the job, presumably." She chewed on her lip again. "I ought to be able to suggest a date, or selection of dates, when the tactics will work best."

"Good."

"Naturally," she told him, with the ghost of a smile. "You've hired the best. And l'd say that even if I weren't."

"You realize, of course, that it may come down to a firefight?"

Her eyes did not drop this time. She met him straight-on and unyielding. "It will come down to a firefight. They worked in Africa, remember? You never let yourself be taken alive by the opposition. As I recall, Fox was damn good with any weapon, modern or primitive. Dutch could hit the broad side of a barn, if he were twenty feet from it, but he was a close-contact specialist himself."

"So I noticed."

A shudder rippled up her spine. "Yeah." She massaged her left hand absently. "Well, that's my best guess."

He glanced down at the notes made during her discussion. "I'd like you here for the briefing this afternoon."

"Fine."

He made shorthand notes on his pad. "And I'd like to put a tap on your phone."

She paused. "Is that necessary?"

"Yes."

"Do you need a warrant for that?"

"Not unless you object to it."

"If it's something you need, I won't object."

He accepted that. "If you're to be here at the briefing, then we might need to patch your line into here. In case you should be contacted while you're out."

"Fine."

"Do you have any questions?"

With an absolutely bland face, Jordan Connelly said, " _Are_ you keeping me?"

He looked up. Her expression did not flicker, but her eyes gave her away. "Is there some reason I shouldn't be?"

One eyebrow lifted in that ironic amusement she occasionally showed. "I _have_ worked with men platonically in the past."

"Not with me."

A corner of the smile in her eyes escaped. "Should I take that as a character indication?"

"Of my cover, yes."

At that, he got the brilliant smile from last night. "Then I shall do my best to play it that way.

Martin said with his own cool amusement, "You're a good actress."

The smile vanished. "I do my job." With clear warning, she added, "I don't necessarily like it, but I do it. And not shoddily, either."

So she meant— "If you didn't give them the best possible tactics, Fox would suspect something, wouldn't he?"

"Rather."

"So I would expect you to do your best." It brought them back to the question she had wriggled out of answering. "And I do my job. Which involves stopping them. However it goes down."

"I know."

"You have an opinion on it?"

Jordan's eyes slid away from him again. "Men like that—" A long pause, then, with an undercurrent of bitterness, she said, "People like that don't belong in civilization. Not among people who can't react to defend themselves. They're too dangerous. I told you before. They have to be stopped. However it takes."

"Some mercenaries adjust to the situation."

"You don't foul your bolthole. But if you don't plan to stay there, it doesn't matter." She stretched. "I would like to see those correlations when they're done, if I might. Any data I can get helps."

"What I can clear, I'll let you see. I expect the briefing to be about three o'clock."

"I'll be here. I think I'll go get some groceries and hit up a bookstore." She stood up, tossed the braid back from her shoulder and gave him a punctilious smile. At the door, she paused. "Oh."

He glanced up, to see her half-turn.

"Someday," she said, "tell me what's lacking in my security system."

"A dog."

She swung around and leaned back against the doorjamb, folding her arms below her breasts. "I beg your pardon?

"A small dog for a housepet. Any system can be trashed if the invader knows how to accomplish it." He gave it a pause. "Besides, your system's on file with Dispatch and Robbery. I had time to study it."

Her eyes widened, and then real warmth softened her face. "Martin, you are definitely what my mother would have called trouble."

It didn't seem to require an answer.

Uncrossing her arms, she said, "I shall keep it in mind," and made a fairly quick exit.

And he suspected she would keep both the dog _and_ her assessment of his character in mind.

Good.

 

When he stopped to consider it, Rico supposed that they all should have expected to find their informant present at a second briefing. The faces around the table did not seem expectant. She sat at the far end of the table, doodling in that little notebook—he craned his neck a little to try and get the page. Her hand tilted, and he glanced up, startled, to catch her quick grin. Kind of—who will watch the watchers, he thought, destroying the Latin. The sketch was of a pair of hands—Trudy's hands, with the pen between them.

Yeah, Trudy was fidgeting with her pen again.

Castillo began talking. Much more than usual. Of course, usually it consisted of them telling him what they were doing and intended to do. Today—

Rico listened. He also kept his eyes on the group. No one but Sonny looked at Jordan, but Sonny held it down to quick glances, sidelong, wary. She must have been studying them, but she did it without being obvious.

The explanations took only a few minutes.

For himself, or for Sonny, to get caught in a cover was an occupational hazard. For Lieutenant Castillo—

"Lieutenant, with all due respect, this is our job," said Crockett.

Now would come either the quelling stare or the verbal bodyslam.

Castillo said, quietly, "T'm aware of that. This is the way it has to be, Sonny."

"There's got to be an alternative."

Still surprisingly quiet, still calm, the Lieutenant said, "If another way comes up, I'll take it. For now we play it as it stands."

Jordan's hands wrapped around the pencil and notebook. Her knuckles whitened. She stared at the table.

Rico felt something, suddenly, like sympathy. Obviously, she didn't like the situation much either. Were the ladies right? Did she know more about mercenaries than she should?

Crockett and Castillo stared at each other across a gulf. Then Sonny nodded and looked down at his open file.

"Where are you right now?" The Lieutenant's question was apparently general.

Gina went first, with Trudy adding in comments. Kiddie porno in the glitter-and-gold set.

Rico felt the woman next to him stir, and looked over in time to catch her expression. Simple disgust? Her face went blank very quickly; he couldn't quite tell.

Switek and Zito sounded extremely pleased when it came around to them, and Rico admitted that well they might be. They had single-handedly (actually, Zito said that the SPCA had a bit to do with it) wiped up a dogfighting ring in an amazingly short time. Due primarily to luck, Tubbs bet, but he didn't mind the Keystone Kops getting some credit.

Castillo nodded. "Good work."

A smile, hastily wiped, crossed Jordan Connelly's face. As if he'd noticed it, Castillo glanced up at her. She gave him a wide-eyed ingenue look, and Rico put a hand over his louth to keep from laughing.

"Crockett, what were you able to find out?"

Rico straightened. This was their cue.

"Not much on the street. The names are known, all right, but Noogie turned into an albino when we pumped him. Referred us to a 'friend'. Friend wasn't much more talkative, but he said the guys are definitely dealing quality nose candy. Very few footprints. Said the word around was they whacked somebody bringing in a load, and anybody who gets in their way needs life insurance with no suicide clauses."

Castillo looked down at the table.

Jordan said, "Dutch,"

Any word on their connections?"

"Everybody says they're either working for or connected to some other guy," Rico added. "Nobody seems to know who exactly."

"Any chance they're independent?"

Jordan's head jerked up, and she wasn't faking the surprise.

Sonny glanced at his partner. "We didn't get that—I get the impression the locals are a little nervous. Rough is one thing, but these guys make the local action look like West Side Story."

Castillo nodded.

The phone rang.

In the silence, the boss picked up the phone. "Yes." A pause, and a second "yes", a bit different in quality. He looked at Jordan, and held out the receiver.

She got up, and walked around to him, not hurrying. All Rico could see was her back.

Connelly," she said. Short.

Rico could feel the blood in his temples. Castillo seemed to think she was on the level. Sonny regarded her as an unknown quantity.

"No," and she sounded clipped, with that British overlay back in place. "You listen to me. Fox knows better, and you can tell him that. I don't talk to flunkies. He wants to deal, he calls me back—himself—in five minutes." She put the phone down. Not hard. Just—finally.

Rico raised his eyebrows at his partner. Sonny looked—startled. And pleased.

Jordan went over to the window, apparently surveying the squad-room. After a moment, she patted her back pockets, restlessly, in the way Sonny did when hunting for a packet he wasn't carrying.

Stan got up and went out. In a few seconds, he came back in with a pack of Camels, 'borrowed' from somebody's desk. Even Sonny wouldn't smoke Camels. He said, "Here," gruffly and held them out.

"Thank you," she said. She tapped one out, and Switek fumbled in his breastpocket for a lighter. She took the light in the way ladies did at parties, with her hand cupped around his and leaning over a little. As she straightened up, Rico saw her look up through her lashes at Stan and smile. All easy, natural, _graceful_. Made it look real.

Stanley Switek actually blushed. Obviously rocked, he went back and sat down, and did not look at anyone, not even Larry, who looked at his partner as if the big guy had grown wings and Robert Redford's face.

And Jordan Connelly smoked the unfiltered Camel as if it were tissue paper, instead of strong enough to curl teeth.

The phone rang again.

She turned.

Castillo looked at her. She nodded.

It rang twice. Three times. Four.

On the fifth ring, she picked it up and said, "Ja?"

Silence.

She turned away, with her back to them, and rested one thigh against the table. "I'm interested." Another pause. "Hold it. I have a partner.... Yes, him .... I don't have to answer that, Fox, and you don't have any business asking .... He specializes in close contact .... " This pause went on a long time, and then she shrugged. "Two reasons, love. One, I'm out of practice, and two, as I told you, I have a small problem with my left hand. The black glove clenched, and Rico noticed, all over again, how the fingertips looked unnaturally straight. "I need protection. And he's good at it."

Castillo was ignoring them all. Which was good, because Gina and Trudy looked like they wanted to choke, die, or leave the room. So did Switek and Zito.

"Oh, I trust you," she said. "Are you telling me you're working alone?" A bite at the end of it. And a smile in the next few words. "Good. I hate misapprehensions.... Yes .... Where and when?" She seemed to realize that her notebook and pencil were at the other end of the table.

When she twisted, Sonny tossed them to her.

He got an absent smile, as she flipped to a blank page and scribbled. Castillo didn't move, but she shoved the notebook over so he could read it.

It made an interesting picture, Rico thought: Jordan Connelly leaning over the formica tabletop, scribbling in the little leather-bound notebook, and Martin Castillo watching her hands, with his hard, well-used face as inscrutable as the heavy in some 1930s melodrama.

She tapped out a second Camel with her right hand, using the left to hold the receiver. She lit this one from the butt of the first. Her fingers trembled. As if she'd noticed, she frowned and stubbed out the butt more roughly than necessary.

"No problem. He'll make it." The dryness returned. "I'm certain you'll get along _beautifully_."

The Lieutenant's eyes flicked up.

Jordan smiled at him, with the abrupt brilliance of diamonds on velvet, and a little cool mockery in it, too. "Tomorrow at three. We'll be on time." Receiver connected with cradle. She rubbed out the second cigarette and sighed. In the same brittle tone, she said, "And yet another night's sleep shot to hell," then stood and walked back to her seat.

A very slight frown furrowed between the Lieutenant's eyebrows. He glanced around the table. "If anything goes out on the street, I want to hear about it."

No answers but then it wasn't a question, was it?

Crockett did nod, absently, while gathering up his materials. The others were already diffusing into the squadroom, and Rico paused in the doorway to wait for his partner.

Sonny paused, standing to one side and slightly behind Castillo. A certain tension in the Lieutenant's spine and arms said he knew Crockett was there.

Jordan looked up.

Rico shifted. What a strange look on Sonny's face— Like he said, 'He trusts you and so I do'.

And the Connelly woman's eyes said—?

Don't. I don't want to do this. Let me out. Don't.

Somewhat unnerved, Rico stepped out the door. Not more than ten seconds later, his partner followed.

 

Jordan rested her head in her hand. "You know where that beach is?"

"Yes." He flipped a page over and signed it.

She settled her chin in her palm, and tapped her index finger against her lower lip, nervously. "There's no cover, of course."

"No," He did look up now. "But there are a lot of bathers on any beach. We'll have backup."

"He'd be a damn fool to try anything at this point. There's no reason." Castillo had gone back to his reports, but she got no overwhelming sense of 'goawayyoubotherme'. She offered, "If I packed a picnic basket, you could put a gun in it."

Head down, he nodded."Yours will be in your purse?"

"Am I carrying?"

"You have a permit."

"And he'll expect me to," she muttered. "Yeah, I have a bag it'll fit in." She watched him work, half-expecting the dismissal, if in no other manner than his getting up to go back to his office.

He stayed put.

Not an unpleasant sensation, watching someone work. She said, irrelevantly, "He thinks you beat me, you know."

Now the dark head lifted. "Should I?" It arrived in an interested, inquiring tone.

Jordan lost it. She threw her head back and laughed. At last, with some semblance of control, she said, "I don't know. Would you?"

To that she got a dirty look.

And, more calmly, to his answer, she said, "No, I am not a beach ball or a puppy to be kicked." A pause, and she added, "I may be a cat, but that's a totally different line."

The dark eyes suddenly acquired an expression she did not remember seeing. It made her wary.

In his low, quiet voice, Martin Castillo said, "Do you want some milk?"

She lost it again. When she came up for air, she shook her head and said, "Exit, stage—right. And I suppose I'll see you around two tomorrow?"

"One-thirty," he said.

Jordan got to the door, and a devil she usually tried, slightly to resist, kicked her one more time. "I prefer cream," she said. She was not quite brave enough to look him in the eye and cheek him.

"I shall keep it in mind." He couldn't do accents, but he had her inflections down pat.

Walking through the squadroom with a straight face and an unhurried stance was the hardest thing she'd done in _years_.


	6. Chapter 6

March 21, 1986

For Miami in March, seventy-five degrees felt normal. After laying out a great square blanket for ground cover, Jordan drew out a thin silk shawl and draped it over her shoulders. The breeze blowing in from the ocean seemed almost cool. Her purse, open, lay next to the open picnic basket. She gave him a peculiar glance.

Martin said, "What's wrong?

She bit her lower lip, and something like an embarrassed chuckle escaped. "l'm mentally slandering you."

He waited.

"Sorry. I was having unnerving thoughts of you turning up in a suit for the beach. I should have known better."

He glanced down at his pleated khaki pants and deck shoes. "I agreed to put my gun in the basket."

She shrugged. The shawl slipped from her bare shoulders and back. He noticed a faint sprinkling of reddish freckles over the cream-in-coffee tan.

"I _said_ I should have known better." She sounded irritated. Brushing wisps of hair back from her face, Jordan rearranged herself on the sand. It apparently lent no help, because she squinted and lifted a hand to cover her eyes.

He leaned forward, appropriating her bag, and located her sunglasses by touch. Taking them out, he handed them to her. A young couple, both rather less than dressed in bikinis, came within earshot, and he said, "If you won't take care of yourself, someone has to."

Her eyes narrowed, but she put on the sunglasses. "Do you call it being thoughtful or peremptory?"

Martin Castillo observed her in silence a moment. Then he smiled at her, deliberately, and saw her spine stiffen. "Both," he replied.

A pause. "Charming." But he got a smile in answer—

He spared a corner of his mind to wonder if she would have smiled that way at a lover. An apparent tease overlay an actual challenge, in that smile. And then he thought that yes, she just might. On the thought, in character, Martin Castillo took the bottle of suntan lotion from the basket. He took the shawl from her, folded it neatly, and lay it aside. Then he shifted the thick braid of hair over her shoulder. Warming the lotion in his palms first, he began to massage it into her skin. The backless halter left a large expanse of skin to his touch.

Under his fingers, her body shuddered briefly, like a wild animal flinching from contact. He automatically slowed the rub, moving his hands in smaller strokes, noting when the tension in her muscles relaxed.

Jordan sighed, once, and arched slightly as his fingertips grazed her spine. Another minute shift, and she was now close enough that he could have kissed the nape of her neck.

He began to concentrate on his breathing, using the techniques to put himself at a distance from her scent: almonds in the lotion, mingling with the heat of her body and the lilac perfume. Leaning away, he felt the control slide back into place.

She offered him a towel.

He wiped remnants of lotion from his hands.

"Are you really comfortable?"

Martin looked at her.

The dark glasses hid her green eyes. "If you aren't, you could put your head on my lap."

An afternoon at the beach, the cover, needing to pretend to be natural .... Martin turned and settled his head in her lap, stretching out along the blanket with its garish pattern of primitive figures (woven in someplace south of the equator?), feeling the softness of cotton and flesh incongruous with the hard lines of her coiled legs. He saw her hand, reaching over him to choose an apple from the basket. She split it with a small silver fruit knife, and offered him one-half with the same ease she had given him the towel. The flesh tasted crisp and tart.

He gauged time passed. Two forty~five, perhaps.

Would Fox be early?

Something like reproach mixed with amusement had been in her voice, when he came to her house at twelve forty-five. "I should be getting used to this."

Consuela had not wanted him to go into the kitchen. He had merely stepped around her.

And caught Jordan Connelly with her hair down—

Or at least in a braid and bare shoulders. One small Hispanic girl sat on the tiled island in the middle of the tiled kitchen floor, while Jordan sat within arms'-reach, on a high stool. The child poked stalks of frangipani into the braid, with more enthusiasm than style. Other children, of varying ages and sizes, littered the remaining chairs and floor.

Jordan chatted to them in a jumble of Spanish and Portuguese, telling them tall tales about zebras and rhinos and lions, illustrated by gestures of spoon and bowl. A boy, a bit older than the frangipani-girl, poured chopped nuts and chocolate chips into the bowl, which tilted dangerously under gesture and weight. She rescued the bowl, stirred quickly, and asked for something in Portuguese.

Shouts of laughter, and then an older girl, maybe twelve, gave her the Spanish for a cookie sheet. Jordan corrected herself, and stood up, shivering as drops of water from the frangipani trickled down her back.

The peacock-blue sarong she wore covered very little of her legs; runner's legs, with faded scratches and scars, long and hard and shapely.

The children saw him, and stopped.

Jordan swung around, and color flooded her face, then down, disappearing beneath the brief cloth.

He felt her hand, featherlight, drop onto his chest, as she leaned over him to discard the apple core. The hand started to lift.

He put his over it.

In the polarized twilight of his sunglasses, he saw another faint flush darken her skin. Jordan left the hand where it lay.

The sun was very warm.

Once he thought about the backup scattered over a hundred square yards of bone-white beach, and shrugged off the thought. Sonny Crockett should have no comments at all about what was necessary to maintain a cover.

Under his hand, hers turned, and she squeezed his fingers in what might have appeared to be affection. "Company," she said softly.

He went from supine to sitting in a matter of a second.

A tall white-haired man in loose ivory slacks and a short-sleeved navy shirt sauntered towards them. He wore sandals. He walked as if used to sand. At the edge of the blanket, Fox stopped. His broad scarred hands slipped into the pockets of his slacks. In an old voice, a raspy tiger's voice, he said, "Jordan. Señor Santoyo."

Martin nodded. "Senor Fox." He put a little more accent than usual into it.

Fox turned his attention to the woman "If you want to walk over here, we'll discuss—"

"Jordan," Castillo said softly.

Her head swiveled. She looked at him. He did not look up in return.

To the tall older man, she said "We'll talk here."

Martin felt the enmity as something physical and palpable. Fox knelt on the blanket's edge, and Castillo shifted from sitting to kneeling. Jordan sat still, the stillness itself unnatural and tense.

Somehow, her purse had scuttled from the basket to beside her hip.

"One job," Fox said, speaking to her, but with his eyes on Castillo.

Castillo stared at him from the shelter of his sunglasses.

"Background, planning, timing. I'd need it within two weeks. A simple job, nothing fancy. We can talk money later."

"We'll talk money now."

Jordan's head turned again. " _Martin_."

Not looking at her, he laid his hand over hers again. "Now."

Fox's jaw tightened. "I've been hunting you in the records."

"There aren't any."

"So I've noticed." Fox's tone was fast losing all semblance of pleasantry. "It's usual to offer references."

Martin moved his hand from her fingers to the small of her back. "Tony Kerwin and Eddie Danzig."

"They're dead."

He smiled. "You can't blame that one on me."

Jordan choked.

The tilted dark eyes of the old man paused on her. "You vouch for him?"

"I wouldn't bring him otherwise."

He said something to her in Afrikaans. She flushed, but it was rage, not shame, and she answered him in English.

"I take up with whom I please, when I please. Eddie and Tony introduced us in England, and if you think you can tell me what Alan would have thought then be damned to you."

Martin Castillo stood up. He held a hand out to her. "Come on. We're leaving."

Fox's shrewd hard eyes narrowed to cat-like slits. "I may have spoken in haste. Humor an old man and sit down." The last was in the Japanese mode.

A slip? Or deliberate?

He looked down at Jordan, who obviously waited for his his decision. Or his vote—they were supposed to be partners.

Martin sat.

"I have a wetwork professional already," Fox said. He did not elaborate. "I suppose another might be useful. Do you specialize in anything else?"

"Target shooting."

A nod. "Good." He studied them both another minute. "It will be two or three days before I'll be in touch with you. We'll set up a meet then."

Jordan nodded.

Neither man offered English courtesy of hand-shaking. Fox simply stood up and walked away across the beach.

"It reminds me," she said, "of reading about the reason for shaking hands in primitive cultures. So you could check the other man's sleeve for weapons. Which, in your case, would have been redundant."

"You've changed your mind about my appearance?"

She frowned. Her voice sounded reluctant. "I'll do quite a bit to get my own way. Including edit truth."

And sudden fits of blunt honesty to flavor the blend. Martin Castillo watched her pack away the blanket and what remained of the food.

"I still don't like this." Savagery rang in her words.

He gave honesty for honesty. "Neither do I."

Jordan sat back on her heels glanced at him. After a moment, she finished with the basket.

He gave her a hand up.

"Have you had any word yet on those correlations?" she asked.

"Yes, l'll take you by the office and we'll pick them up."

An absent nod before a fierce frown. "We?"

He did not smile. "Would you expect me to drop you off at your door?"

"No," she said. "Not particularly." But she _did_ smile, just a little.

 

As the heavy deadbolts clicked on the door, and it swung inward, Martin Castillo heard the phone.

"Oh, vloek," said Jordan. She left the key in the door and the door open, sprinting across the room to grab the phone off the coffee table. "Seven-four-eight-zero," she said into the receiver, each of the numbers punctuated by an attempt to get some breath. After a pause, she gulped air. "Susan? Hello, luv—what's happening .... " Jordan stepped back and sat down on the padded couch arm. "Don't tell me the Queen's people work on Saturday, too... I know what you think l am, and you needn't repeat it. What have you got for me?"

Martin took the keys out of the door. He collected the basket and her shawl, setting them inside, then shut and locked the door. He carried basket and shawl into the kitchen, then came back to sit down in the easy chair.

"...kind of him," Jordan was saying. "I knew I could count on your Mr. Cowley to do it up good and proper. And it was gone through just a half-hour or so ago?.... Looks like the bait's been taken, then. Anything else?" In this pause, she frowned. "Why'd you call him? Came up in the dossier? .... Yeah, but I'd think Tokyo even a further trunk call than London—" The frown became a scowl. "I _am_ listening."

The color drained out of her face. "Say that again .... No, just as you did .... " She twisted on the couch arm so that her face was no longer visible, and her voice changed, the tone dropping. "Yes, I know what it is. Was he sure? There's no doubt?... How long did he give him? .... And how long ago was this, Susan?"

She stood up, and rocked indecisively on her heels. "No, now. I appreciate the trouble. It's just—something I didn't quite expect. Thank you. I'll call if I have anything to report." She put the phone carefully into the cradle.

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "Nothing important."

The words were a lie. The voice a was a lie.

"D'you want some tea? I think I'll make some." Her sandals clicked on marble floor; she moved quickly, like someone escaping.

Water ran in the kitchen.

He gave it thirty seconds or so, then followed her.

Jordan bent over the sink, one hand over her eyes. Water spilled over the edges of the kettle where it sat under the tap.

"What's wrong?" He kept his voice quiet and unthreatening as possible.

She straightened. After a minute, when she finally spoke, her voice sounded—exhausted. Dead. "He's dying."

"Who'?"

"Fox. Susan—Susan's in the consulate here—She tells me his doctor in Tokyo gave him six months to live. That was two months ago." She turned off the tap. "He was good to me. Alan said I had to learn to defend myself— Oh, _Christ!_ " The kettle thunked back into the sink, water sloshing over its sides. "I was a wet-nosed, wide-eyed, _naive_ kid, walked into more than I could _possibly_ handle. And between them—all of them—" She picked up the kettle again, and set it on the electric burner with unnecessary force. "They didn't do me any goddamned favors," Jordan said, low and hard. "But they kept me alive. I can't believe the things I did in Africa, the things I accepted as normal."

Situational ethics. Developing a conscience at her age.

"Does any of this make more sense now?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. Unless he's proving T.S. Eliot wrong."

Not with a bang, but a whimper "Susan works for Mr. Cowley?"

A pause. "Well, yes. She's in the country legitimately, though. The same as diplomatic attaches in England."

"And you make reports to her?"

A longer pause this time. "He asked me to keep an-eye on things if I could."

There was a piece of the puzzle missing. "Why?"

Pulling a stepstool out of a corner, Jordan stood on it to get a box from the top shelf of the cupboard. At the same time, she took down a canister with Japanese writing down one side.

Green tea.

She put the stool back and un packed the tea set. "He helped me. We helped each other. I gave him a mass murderer—he gave me the man who did this." She held up her left hand. "The man who murdered my husband."

"A man you knew in Africa?"

"A man we were acquainted with," she said, precisely. "Marchon Choucheaux, he called himself."

"Nothing to do with this?"

"Nothing at all. I was in Miami because of my mother. Cowley's people were tracking an 'international drug dealer' that someone identified as Fox. Cowley says 'unofficially'."

"I know."

"Then you know as much as I do. Why did you say they might be independent?"

"Because the dealer was ID'd as Fox. Fox was never called a courier. Are you sure there would be an employer in this?"

"I'm not sure of anything!" Her voice cracked. She sagged back against the sink. "I'm sorry. But I don't know. Do dealers act the way Fox has been?"

"Sometimes."

"Why would a dealer want a tactician?"

Martin considered it. "To plan a takeover, maybe. To set up a snatch. There are several reasons."

"So he steals explosives."

"Maybe. There were weapons as Well"

"Yeah."

The kettle whistled. Jordan turned and poured the boiling water into the teapot. The sharp smell of brewing tea swirled briefly into the room before she capped the pot. "So what do we do?"

"Can you play chess?"

She turned and looked at him, as if he'd grown another head. "No. Alan had a set—it's in the study."

"I'll teach you to play."

Something in her face softened. "You can try." She carried the tea set into the front room and knelt to set it on the coffee table. She frowned. "Damn it.

"What?"

"There is something I'm missing. I can almost _see_ it. I just can't quite place it."

"Give it a rest. it'll come to you." If he could keep her from worrying at it, then maybe the last missing pieces of the jigsaw would drop into place.

He hoped.


	7. Chapter 7

March 23, 1986

"I really think you need to hear this, Lieutenant," Trudy said, leading the way back to the interrogation room. "I wouldn't have called you at home on a Sunday night otherwise."

Castillo did not answer; he walked beside her, with his head bent slightly and his eyes apparently fixed on the floor. The pitiless glare of the overhead fluorescents accentuated the bas-relief of his face, adding five years or so to his supposed age.

Tn the small room, Gina sat on the table, facing the door. The other woman huddled in the single chair, with her arms around her belly and her bleached hair, with its pixie cut, giving her the look of an anorexic black Madonna Ciccone.

"Bambi," and Trudy tried to make her voice gentle, "this is my boss. I want you to tell him what you told me. Okay?"

A pair of liquid-smoke eyes drifted up, then dropped. "It's just like I told the detective. This guy, he's been coming in to the house like for the past month—maybe six weeks, I don't know for sure, like you know—and he don't stick with one of us, like he tries one after the other, and he's not too bad you know, not like he's nice and not like he's some nutcase —anyway, like he comes in today early only it's Sunday and five ain't really early on a Sunday—" She glanced up at Trudy. The grey eyes looked spacey.

Ah, great, and getting higher all the time, right? "Tell him what the guy _did_ , Bambi."

"Can I have a smoke?"

Gina pulled a pack out of her purse—Trudy sent up a silent thanks to partners who didn't smoke but carried anyway—and handed over cigarette and matches.

A thin wisp of stale tobacco scent diffused through the air, carrying the odor of strong cheap perfume with it. The skinny bleached-blond hooker looked fifteen and three-quarters under the lights. Her voice kept a thin nasal Midwestern whine. "So like he comes in and he's like particular tonight, he wants a redhead, and Josette, like she'd got long hair and she just tried going red and it doesn't look too bad on her either, so she goes up with him." Bambi dragged nervously on the Winston. "So everything's cool until like forty-five minutes after and Josette she starts screaming for him stop and Rick goes up to check—" Bony black-coffee fingers lit a second Winston. Bambi started to tap her foot nervously. "Like he's doing a real number on her, you know? I mean, he really just beating the shit outta her, and like he really seems know his business, and when Rick comes at him, like this guy he just knocks Rick flat on his ass, you know, if the boss hadn't pulled a gun on him like he'd've just whacked 'em both, no sweat, you know?"

'What did you say the guy's name was?' Trudy prompted.

The Lieutenant looked like granite waiting for a chisel.

"Well, you know we don't get names, but like he told us to call him Dutch. He always paid double, but like he had funny eyes, kinda looked through you. And he knew Josette's name, but while was smacking her, like he kept calling her by somebody else's name—Jordan. That was it. Funny name for girl, you know, but it must have been, cause he called her a lying slut and he was gonna give it to her this time—and things like that. And so Josette's in Miami General and Rick's headache and seeing double." Bambi finished the smoke.

A jackhammer wouldn't have gotten through the granite wall that used to be Castillo's face.

"And like I know we ain't people, but nobody ought to go around beating up on a girl when she ain't even done nuthin', right? And how's Josette gonna work with her jaw wired and her nose busted?" Bambi rocked back and forth sullenly. "Like ain't that what you guys are here for? To get the nuts off the street? It's gettin' so a girl ain't safe in her own house."

Castillo wasn't going to say a word. Trudy could see that. She glanced at Gina, and Gina nodded.

"We'll take care of it," Trudy said.

In the brief silence, Martin Castillo left the room. Trudy fished in her purse and came up with two deuces and an ace. "Here," Fifty might be a little more than the budget would stand this week, but Gina was good for a tap if it were needed. "We'll keep in touch. Listen, if this Dutch comes back in, you give me a call, okay?"

"Sure, Trudy, but I don't think he's gonna. Like the boss she said she'd kill him if he put a foot in the door, you know?" On the smell of sweat and cheap scent and tobacco, the young prostitute floated out of the door and down the hall.

Castillo stood there, to one side, and when the two women stepped out, he started for his office. The implication was obvious.

They followed him.

Trudy got this sudden insane urge to quote "Mary had a little lamb", or "I have a little shadow", but suppressed it. The boss did not look to have a sense of humor this evening.

In the controlled claustrophobia of his office, he stood behind his desk and stared at the wall. Over his shoulder, he said, "What's your opinion on this informant's accuracy?"

Gina stood a little behind her, like backup, but it didn't ease Trudy's sense of sudden isolation, standing alone in the light. She managed to keep from clearing her throat. "I've had contact with her for about seven months. Bambi's got good eyes, and she's clued me in on a couple of kiddie porn rings, a drug deal or two, and that wino slasher Homicide had running Little Havana three or four months ago. I'd say she's straight on this, Lieutenant."

He nodded, once, then turned. "We have a tap on the phone and her cooperation. I want surveillance on the house. Two officers, plainclothes, twenty-four hours." He sat down at the clean desk. "I'll leave it to you two to arrange. Any problems with assignments, let me know."

Trudy bit back a question.

Gina asked it. Softly, with the barest hint of an accent to indicate her agitation "You gonna tell her?"

Castillo looked at them.

So it was a stupid question.

"l'll be there tonight," he said. "For the cover. I still want the surveillance."

Well, Trudy told herself, nobody has to hand me my hat and show me the door. I know when to leave.

Like now.

 

"And that's it?" Sonny said. "Just 'I want surveillance'?"

Gina adjusted the binoculars and squinted against the Tuesday twilight.

"That's it." She looked at her colleague and said, 'What did you expect? A rousing rendition of 'Hearts and Flowers'?"

"Well, he sure as hell is trotting her around on a leash these days. I might have thought he'd at least express a little personal concern."

The dark-haired woman looked back through the glasses. "It really grinds you, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"That the boss seems to have taken to her."

Sonny snorted, rudely, and slouched down in the driver's seat of Gina's Buick. "She's a fox. Even Castillo's not immune to a pretty face and a great pair of legs. So what if he doesn't know shit about her background?"

"Like I said. Grinds you. And what makes you think he doesn't know her background?"

A grumble. Then, "Sure seems to trust her."

"Trudy thinks he's interested in her."

"What do you think?"

Gina looked at the sullen stubborn Anglo face and smiled just a little. "If Trudy was a horse, I'd bet on her."

"Charming." Sonny straightened. "What's that?"

"Her and the kids."

"What kids?"

"Her housekeeper's kids. She bakes 'em cookies."

He fumbled for the thermos of coffee. "And maternal. What more could a man ask for?"

"A little less sarcasm." Gina held out the binoculars. "Here. You look."

Sonny adjusted the focus. After a minute, in a slightly different tone, he said, "They really seem to like her, don't they?"

"Yeah."

He watched the scene of Jordan Connelly interpreting the statement I 'go fly a kite' literally. Gina caught a glimpse of a black suit in the background. Sonny could always be softened by a pair of childish eyes.

Was a damned shame Caroline took Billy to Georgia two years ago. The fact that Crockett didn't talk about it said it hurt.

The kite, at last, came down in the last fading remnants of light. A battered Monte Carlo pulled up in front of the house, and a Cubano boy, not older than sixteen, stuck his head out of the window to address one of the children.

Kids and a Cubano woman piled into the car, and Jordan carefully rolled up the kite before going back into the house.

It grew dark, even though the rising moon flooded the sand with ghostly silver illumination. The house stood alone under the spooky limning light.

Eight-ten. Sonny stretched. Not quite three hours to go.

Gina had the glasses again. "They're going out. She's got the jeans and on. Looks like work."

"I'll call it in." Sonny reached for the mike.

Castillo's black car roared into life. The lights blinked on and off, then it pulled out of the drive and onto the road.

Easily and unobtrusively, Gina eased her dark blue Buick out behind it.

 

Jordan cast a covert glance at her companion. Martin Castillo's hands dwarfed the narrow rim of the steering wheel; they looked at ease, the fingers relaxed. His face was something carved out of shadows; his eyes lost in them.

In Africa, Alan's hands talked for him when he was silent. She could always tell how a campaign went. His long fingers, usually stained with tobacco or dirt or the green-grey smudges of jungle vegetation, would quiver like ant's antennae in anticipation; tap restlessly with nerves; or sometimes lift sharply in command, a gesture chilling her heart and mind—Wait. Listen.

Another bad habit she'd picked up from him?

Bad habits. Whenever she got an attack of nerves, she found herself seizing on details in the scene around herself, as if focussing on something infinitesimal could lend her needed control. She had learned control. She didn't require her bad habits here and now.

As the Lieutenant's car swung around first corner, lights swept across the rear-view mirror.

How long had there been lights behind them?

"We're being followed?" Of course _he_ would know.

"Yes."

With a sudden surge of exasperation at his non-explanation, Jordan said, "Is that good, bad, or indifferent?"

"It's two of my people."

If she could see his face in the dark, it would have that half-amused look again. So it was a good thing. He didn't have to act as if she were the straight man in an Abbott and Costello flick. With sudden spite, Jordan said, "So, I guess it's good, unless you've done something you aren't telling me about."

"If your nerves are going to blow our cover," Martin's voice had all the gentleness of a razor, "then we'll call it off now and try it another way."

"I'm not going to blow anything!" Her words cracked again. Real convincing, Jordan girl. She took a few deep breaths. "I apologize." Of course— "I'm always bloody apologizing." she muttered. "I do get nerves before this sort of thing. I always have. I'll be fine once we get there. Unfortunately, my nerves tend to result in my shooting off my mouth."

"Maybe I should beat you." But it sounded good-humored.

"I've been decked for it. It didn't help. On the other hand, if it would help your nerves or your temper, feel free. I won't even hit back."

"I appreciate the concession. Two or three left turns?"

"Three," she said.

He glanced at her.

Jordan bit her lower lip again. Little by little, she gave things away she didn't mean to release. Seven years out of practice was too damn long. "I have an eidetic memory. With a limit. If I see it on paper, I can memorize it. If I can visualize it, I can remember it. I'm not Nero Wolfe's Archie—"

"You don't remember conversations word for word."

"No. Not usually."

"What does that mean?"

She looked out of the window at the streetlights, and thought about how to answer the question. "The last couple of years in Switzerland, I started trying to see conversations. Sometimes it works. If I visualize them as—dialogue on a page, like a script, I seem to be able to recall them."

"Do Fox and Dutch know this?"

"No. I was always too sensitive about it. I had a teacher in high school once call me a freak. Alan was the first person I knew who treated it as something marvelous."

Castillo was quiet again.

Every time they got into a discussion she had to bring up Alan. Couldn't she quit dragging the man into all discussions?

"See if you can keep it hidden. It might be useful."

The directions guided them out of Miami, south and west, to an area either undeveloped or deserted. Mud squelched under the tires.

Jordan chewed nervously on the inside of her lower lip. She knew these were the directions she'd been given. But certainly they'd left civilization.

"A turn-off just past this old factory," she said. "Supposed to have fresh gravel."

"I see it."

"How far out of the city are we?"

"Not more than five miles."

"Is that all? I'd've sworn we'd gone further."

The fresh gravel led to a warehouse. Boarded-over windows—but in the glare of the headlights, Jordan recognized the brightness of new steel guards under the layer of boards. The weeds and underbrush grew thickly towards the drive's beginning, but here, nearer the door, someone had scythed them clean.

Martin put the car into Park. He glanced over at her.

"I wish it wasn't so damn dark," she said. "I hate the dark."

"What are the contact instructions?" He ignored her fretful complaint.

She sighed. "Whistle."

He looked at her

"Trust me," she said. "I know what l'm doing."

Under her boots, the ground gave spongily. The heavy, repulsive odor of rotting greenery clung to the air. Jordan took a breath, then whistled, like a robin, the warbling five-note recognition signal learned years ago.

A light showed from the steel door of the warehouse.

Martin's hand slipped under her elbow. They waded through the mucky grass to the door.

Fox was there.

She grimaced at him. "Couldn't you pick someplace clean?"

"Reminded me of home," he said. "Buenas noches."

Martin nodded. The man had no accent to speak of—kindly.

A short corridor stretched in front of them. Fox held a lantern. There were no other lights.

After ten yards or so, the corridor dead-ended. He pushed a door inward and waited for them to step through.

Strong light made her blink, her eyes watering.

Five men stood there, eying her and her companion.

One was Dutch.

§§§

"And Dutch," Alan said casually.

Light blue eyes watched her, out of a picture-perfect face and a pleasant face. The eyes watched her no matter where she went, like a photograph with the eyes centered.It should all have been pleasant, or at least innocuous.

She had the creepy sense that something here was wrong. As the man watched her, she felt as if something—slimy and repulsive—crawled over her bare skin.

§§§

Jordan still felt the same way.

"The Executive Committee," said Fox, with a quick sweep of one hand and a sardonic overtone. "You know Dutch. And Sanger, as well, I think—"

§§§

"Can't miss 'im," Alan grinned. "Little bloke, says he's half-Pygmy, got a set a false teeth must'a been for Goliath."

And on cue, Sanger appeared around a corner, cradling a bazooka that almost matched him size for size.

§§§

"Miss Jordan," the small dark-skinned man said, stepping from his place to hold out a hand. He grinned widely, showing almost all of the dentures.

He would. Nobody but Sanger and other blacks ever called her 'Miss Jordan', no matter how many times she tried to bully them into dropping the 'Miss'.

"Sanger," and she smiled. "You look well."

"I get old. You look young still."

Those damn teeth were enough to frighten a dentist. "Thank you. I think."

A faint smile had lightened Fox's expression. "Ciro and Raymond Alvarez," he continued, with a nod to a matched of Latino bookends, "and Jean LaRoux," who looked as if he'd taken last name from his carroty hair.

Except for Sanger, the 'Executive Committee' clustered together like a herd of sheep.

Or a lynch mob.

In turn, Fox introduced the newcomers, as "Jordan Connelly" and "Martin Santoyo", identifying their specialties, and adding a comment regarding their references "checking out". The last rather pointedly aimed, Jordan thought, at Martin.

One of the twins, the one with the knife-scar from his right eye the corner of his twisted lip, into the silence in heavy idiomatic Spanish. "Bringing in a broad? Is this to be a cockfight, then?"

"Tell Mr. Machismo," she said to Fox, in proper upmarket English, "he's old-fashioned. How much of this jacking around you expect me to stand for?"

"Impatient."

Jordan rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Time is money. Isn't that what you always used to tell me, luv? My time's as valuable as yours."

"More," interjected the dark-haired shadow behind her. As he spoke, his left hand settled in the small of her back, warm and supporting.

And possessive, she reminded herself. Let's not forget possessive. Jordan leaned back a little into the hand. God knew it wouldn't hurt to have this crowd of hard men see that she had her own tough—owner.

She added, "We can free-lance anywhere, Fox. I ran into you first. And I admit to sentiment. You want expertise, you got it. You want to waste time? You pay for it."

The bookends looked disapproving. But interested. Which could be good or bad. The Frenchman openly grinned. All of Sanger's teeth showed.

Dutch just watched her.

Jordan didn't look at him long.

"I don't have all the plans in final," Fox said. A slight crooked smile disfigured the angles of his face. "Step over here and look at these preliminaries."

She knew Martin would be nearby, so she followed her old teacher's instructions.

"I'm interested in hijacking a truck," Fox told her.

Independent.

Martin had been right.

"Take a look at the highways. I need a place to get it off the road and unload it. Just preliminaries, you understand—I'll give you the actual details at our next meeting."

Her brain kicked into overdrive almost automatically. She barely heard him. A map of Miami spread across a great flat table, with residential areas, one-way streets, and stoplights marked. She noticed, absently, that a route had been sketched in. Not really a good route. Too many lights. But it stayed out of the residential sections, and that must be the point. Not headed for this warehouse. Headed south. Almost straight for the Keys. Hadn't someone on the news a few nights ago talked about—Florida's own Bermuda Triangle, the Keys?

Sudden warmth on her shoulder intruded: a hand, the fingers squeezing to get her attention.

Martin?

She turned her head.

White hand.

A scar crossed the knuckles. She'd cut him there, that day.

Dutch.

Jordan frowned, and twitched irritably. The hand stayed. In fact, it slid down her arm, and Dutch's soft Germanic voice murmured to her, so close she could almost feel his breath on her earlobe.

"You could be nice, you know, liebchen."

Her stomach knotted. Words swelled up, jostling on her tongue for release.

Then a tanned hand, manicured nails, clamped on Dutch's wrist, and Martin Castillo tore the other man's hand away from her. "But she doesn't have to," her erstwhile partner said.

My God, he sounds—savage.

Dutch looked down his aquiline Aryan nose. "Possessive, isn't he, Jordan?"

She had no chance to answer. On the other hand, she didn't try—Castillo put himself physically between them.

"Yes." The tone, and the eyes, said the rest of it.

The Latino bookends looked suddenly more approving.

Oy gevalt.

"Senor Fox," Martin said, sharply, with that edge still in his voice.

"Yes?"

"Is there anything else tonight?"

Dutch's pale blue eyes still hovered on them. The quirk of supposed amusement still contorted his face.

And all the damn spiders of Africa, all the years of sleeping with a gun and a knife, prickled along her spine.

"No." Fox sounded—satisfied?

What in the bloody hell is going on here?

"Jordan," and Martin expertly turned her, "we're leaving." He looked at the older man. "You'll be in touch?"

"It'll be a couple of days. I have some details to finish up."

The Lieutenant took her arm, not like a copper—like some of the men she remembered from the days with Alan.

§§§

"I'd never let a man treat me like that, like some puppy on a leash, out for—walkies."

Alan smiled a little. "Some women don't mind it." He didn't add, as they both knew, that some women didn't have a choice.

§§§

She twitched again, startled, and in fluid Spanish, as idiomatic as Alvarez', Martin said, "You must remember l'm not English."

"She gave him the Portuguese." I've noticed."

 

He glanced up once to be sure Gina's car had pulled in behind them, checking it by shutting his headlights off a second. The lights of the trailing car blinked twice, paused, then once.

Good.

Next to him, Jordan's quiet voice broke the impasse. "What aren't you telling me?"

A brief picture of the young black hooker flashed across his mind. He clenched his teeth.

Silence.

"All right, let me put it this way," she said. "What is it that l'm not supposed to know?"

Jordan could put Crockett on the floor fast enough. Could she handle a man like Dutch: six-foot-two, two hundred pounds at least and it all muscle? She acted professional enough. "An informant told us a prostitute ended up in the hospital from a beating. Her attacker was identified as a man called Dutch. Tall, blond, well-built, blue eyes. He specifically asked for a red-haired hooker." He heard some of the rage slipping back into his voice; he couldn't quite control it. "While he beat her, he called her Jordan."

Next to him, the woman was quiet. He heard her take in a breath, then let it out in a hiss.

"How badly was she injured?" Very controlled.

Cheekbone shattered, jaw broken in two places, nose fractured, three cracked ribs. Doctor says it'll be six weeks before they can do any plastic surgery, but she'll live."

Another pause.

In a odd, tight voice, Jordan said, "If money's a question in putting her back the way she was, tell them to let me know."

He looked at her—and had to look back quickly to get the car into the proper lane. Surprised him. From the corner of his eye, he caught a movement in the dashlights: Jordan rubbing her left hand, again.

She'd do.

They were nearly into the city, though traveling by empty fields and overgrown lots.

Sounding stifled, his companion said, "Stop the car."

He pulled over and put it into Park.

The passenger door swung open. She bolted out.

He stepped out himself. The dark blue Buick drew up in back. Sonny and Gina hopped out. Crockett, naturally, lad his gun out.

At the nearest tree, Jordan dropped to her knees.

He heard her. Retching.

Gina stood squarely in front of him, and he glanced sidelong at her "You told her, huh?" she said.

"Dutch made a move on her," Martin answered, precisely, clipping the words short. "She asked. I told her."

"And then had to stop to toss her cookies," interjected Sonny.

"Only after she offered to pay for the hooker's hospital bill."

Sonny Crockett s face changed. He turned to look at the still-kneeling woman.

Jordan got to her her feet, slowly. They heard her spit, twice, as if to try and clear her mouth.

Crockett went back to the Buick; with a Thermos in one hand, he approached her. A murmur of succinct conversation drifted across the grass. He poured her a cup of something—Martin assumed it was coffee. She rinsed her mouth, shuddered, and drank the rest of it.

"She going to be all right?" asked Gina.

Blown the professional facade to hell, she had, and probably regretting it as much—out of the back of his head a dry little voice said, 'as much as a woman regrets losing her virginity'. "She's done fine so far. She'll be all right."

Sonny brought Jordan across the grass. He had a hand under her arm. In the glare of the Buick's lights, her face looked like paper , bleached white as bone, and her pupils were enormous.

Something else caught Castillo unaware. Sonny's hand on her.

No reason he should have any reaction to that. He did.

In a slightly belligerent tone, Jordan said, "Dinner didn't agree with me. I shouldn't eat pizza."

"We didn't have pizza."

"It was last week. That kind of thing sticks with you."

He bit back a grin. Sonny didn't bother trying.

Gina Calabrese put a hand on the taller woman's shoulder. "You sure you're all right?" Ignoring the black humor.

"I'm fine," the answer came readily. "I don't usually do this sort of thing, really. Don't worry about me." Some color came back into her face.

Sonny said, "Her place, Lieutenant?"

"Yes." Martin took a breath. "I'll stay there tonight.

'Neither one of his people dared to react.

But in the car, at the house, Jordan did.

"You can damn well sleep in the spare bedroom," she told him. "I don't buy couches for people to sleep on."

He gave her a sharp glance, as he opened her door.

"Besides," she said, leading the way up the walk, "you'll be closer if someone does come after me."

He kept himself silent until they were inside and the house locked. But, provoked just beyond his limits, he said, "You have a habit of that."

She kicked off her shoes, and started up the stairs. "Of what?"

"Trying one argument when the first one hasn't worked." He paced her. Even if it were the second attempt, she did have a point.

Jordan paused at the top of the marble staircase, with one hand on the balustrade. He heard a crack of laughter in her voice. "Tenacity is a virtue, officer."

He closed his hand on her arm. "Stubbornness," he corrected, "is a pain in the ass."

Her laughter fell into the gap between them. In the faint lighting of the stylized lily fixtures, she was very close.

Then she stepped closer, and her mouth touched his, lightly, and as if she thought better of it in the middle of the process. She moved, as if to flee.

Martin didn't let her. Yet. Under his hands, she made some stifled—protest?—and then her hands tightened on his shoulders. He felt her muscles, and the softer flesh on top of that, and the taste of strong coffee was on her tongue, and his, and the scent in her silky hair was against his face. The pulse in her throat fluttered, caught, and pounded.

He shifted away from her, to one side, tucking his hands in his pockets where they wouldn't get him in any deeper water.

Jordan's face had that damned blankness. But her voice shook —just a trifle. "The spare room's made up. I hung that extra suit in there, for you, and your shirt and underclothes are in the dresser." She hesitated.

He stared at the floor, not speaking.

Her stockinged feet made no noise. A few seconds later, her bedroom door shut.

Castillo shut the spare bedroom door between himself and the hall. He flipped on the overhead light and took several deep breaths.

This was beginning to be complicated.

§§§

Spurting light, exploding light, clouds of ash and smoke .... Words on a page of a robbery report: "lead shielding, two crates, two hundred kilograms"' "detonators, timers, wiring" .... Fox's voice, slurred with saki, "All my family died at Nagasaki. No one ever paid for that. The Japanese believe in paying debts. All debts—"

§§§

Jordan sat up in the bed. Her heart thudded. She thought it might climb out of her throat.

Fumbling at the foot of the bed, she found her kimono. She belted it as she ran down the hallway. Had he gone into the spare room?

When she rapped on the door, a beginning-to-be-familiar voice answered in the tone of a man practiced to sounding awake at any hour, day or night, "Yes. What is it?"

Jordan shoved the door open, padding across the carpeted floor to the bed. "Is there a nuclear reactor near Miami?"

"What?" He sounded really awake now. Awake and baffled.

"I said, is there a nuclear reactor near Miami?"

Martin Castillo sat upright and checked the bedside lamp on He stared at her, and in his eyes were things best forgotten. "Get dressed I'll call Bomb Squad."

"We're going to the office?"

"Yes."

On her way out the door, she paused to say, "Should I tell whoever's on watch?"

"They'll figure it out."


	8. Chapter 8

March 25, 1986

Trudy paused a second looking at subdued activity in the squadroom. A lot of action for nine in the morning.

Switek came out of the back, with a cup of coffee, and eased massively into his chair. He seemed to be trying real hard to be quiet. A plainclothesman stepped from the Lieutenant's office, and eased the door shut.

"Who's that?" To her surprise, she herself whispering.

Stan glanced up. "Bomb Squad."

"Bomb—!"

One big hand shushed her hastily. Keep it down.

"Why7'"

Switek's mouth twitched. "Lieutenant wants everybody to see him when get in. Go on in and ask him."

"I feel like the straight man for Robin Williams," she muttered, and went over to rap on her boss' door. One rap and walk in.

Castillo's head came up, and his entire face read her a silent warning. His eyes slid sideways briefly, then returned to his notepad.

Trudy glanced quickly in that direction.

Jordan Connelly slept on his couch. Strands of hair escaped from her braid, glimmered in the subdued sunlight. One arm lay across her eyes. A black suitcoat had been carefully arranged over her shoulders

.

Yeah, the boss was in shirt-sleeves. He'd even loosened his tie.

Interesting.

"I want you to run a few simulations for Bomb Squad. Sergeant Goldstein left the programs here. The parameters are on this sheet." Castillo passed the pages and a disk across the flat dark wood.

The figure on the couch stirred.

His eyes shifted again, and while his attention seemed to be elsewhere, Trudy felt a grin slipping out. Castillo's attention snapped back, and she wiped the grin. His eyes said 'if you _dare_ .... '

Bring them to you as soon as I have 'em?" she said, keeping her voice low.

"Yes."

She shut the door very very carefully.

Switek looked up at her, and he said, "Touching, isn't it?"

"How long have they been here?"

"Mickey Goldstein said the Lieutenant got him out of bed at three a.m. They came out of the house at three-fifteen and Zito and I followed them here."

"Larry around~too?"

"No, Castillo sent him to talk to Noogie. Wants to see if some things have been fenced, I guess."

"So you don't know what this is about?"

Stan shook his head. "Your guess is as good as mine." He looked around. "Gina late?"

"Had a hot date last night. I said I'd cover for her if necessary."

"I'd give her a call if I were you. He's not in a very good mood today."

"Where's Sonny and Rico?"

"Oh, he rattled their cages about seven this morning, sent them off someplace north. Everybody's due in at one p.m. Briefing and I guess we'll get it all then."

"Terrific." Trudy looked over her shoulder at the closed door, and smiled a little.

 

Someone said her name.

Jordan swung her feet off the surface, feeling them hit ground as her eyes opened and her brain started reacting. Couch, office—black trousers, white shirt, the narrow line of a black tie—Lieutenant Castillo—and she must have been soundly asleep, because her metabolism had dropped enough that she shivered when the cover over her shoulders fell to her lap.

"How long have I been asleep?" She rubbed her eyes.

"It's almost noon." He held out a mug. "Coffee?"

"Thank you." God, she had to _wake up_. She still felt dizzy and disoriented. She shivered again, and almost pulled the cover back over her shoulders— Martin's suitcoat? Jordan held it out.

"You're cold."

"My metabolism shuts down when I hit deep sleep. I'll warm up." The coffee scalded her throat; it tasted like imported sulfur and brimstone. She couldn't restrain a grimace. "And either the coffee will do it, or it'll poison me."

His mustache twitched a little. "Lunch?"

"Yeah."

"What do you want? 'I'll call the canteen."

She searched for her handbag. "If it's food, I'll eat it. What did I do with my purse?"

"On top of the file cabinet." He punched a couple of buttons on the phone.

Jordan found a comb and undid her hair, shaking out the tangles and combing it thoroughly. With the comb between he teeth, she began to french-braid it, working from the crown to the nape, and finally resorting to holding the ends over her shoulder. "Thank you for the nap. I didn't mean to monopolize your couch.

His gaze focussed on his paperwork.

"No problem. Briefing will be at one o'clock. I'll go down and get lunch."

"I'll do it, if I'm allowed. I'm not busy."

He looked up at her. "Put your tag back on. It's where we had coffee this morning."

Jordan hesitated, running mentally through the directions. "Okay. I can find it." She dug through the purse for the tag that permitted her to wander around the station, clipped it to her collar, and went out the door.

The room was crowded with people. As she passed Crockett's desk, his head lifted.

"Well, Sleeping Beauty's awake. And not guarded by the dragon any longer."

"Say what?"

He pretended to ignore her, addressing his remarks to Rico, who grinned. "At least now we won't have to tiptoe around the room and whisper. I dropped that paper on the floor and thought I was gonna be sent out in the hall."

Oy vey, possessive _and_ protective as well. "Be nice to me, Detective," she said, "I'm going to keep your city from ending up as the punchline of a joke," and timed her stride.

A beat.

Sonny said, "Wait a minute. What's the joke?"

Hadn't she heard Martin sending them off to that nuclear power plant? Jordan swung around at the door and gave it to him, one-two-three— "What's three miles deep and glows in the dark?"

"Oh, shit," said Ricardo Tubbs.

 

He said it to himself again during the briefing. Oh, shit.

During this case, Martin Castillo had been doing more and more of the exposition—he did it now, a terse harsh summary of Sergeant Goldstein's information, and equally concise evaluation of the criminals' personalities.

Rico admitted to himself that describing 'Kent Fox' as a weapons expert whose family died at Nagasaki in 1945, said little or nothing. On the other hand, Martin used only one word to typify Dutch-of-no-last-name.

"Psychopathic."

Jordan interrupted suddenly. "Has there been any further word on the woman he assaulted?" Rico told himself that she could do the clinical attitude as well as anyone....

Trudy answered her. "Doctor says she came out of the coma this morning. They called in a plastic surgeon—a Doctor Morgenstern. He's supposed to be the best, Jordan. Last I heard, he thought he could fix her up.

The red braid bounced when she nodded.

Castillo went on. "I would also say very close to being out of control."

"Look," Crockett said, "are you sure the nuclear-bomb theory is realistic?" He directed his words to the boss and his eyes to Jordan.

Castillo's head raised. His gaze fixed on her as well.

A distinct God-why-me expression crossed her face. Jordan interlaced her fingers. "What exactly do you lean by realistic, Detective Crockett?"

And formal to boot. Not formality would cow Sonny.

"What kind of parameters discussing? Don't you need specialized equipment and scientists to handle this stuff?"

She took a breath. "Back in the late seventies, if I remember my research correctly, a college student wrote a paper explaining exactly how to design an atom bomb. He did it from legal, obtainable sources, and documented further, that all the ingredients could at that time also be acquired legally. Naturally, the government classified his paper. However—this is nineteen-eighty-six, and we have advanced in knowledge. Today, anyone with basic chemical and electrical knowledge could theoretically build a nuclear bomb. It requires," and she ticked the elements off on her fingers, " a safe place to work, lead shielding, radioactive-barriered clothing, chemical explosives, timing devices, and enough plutonium to reach critical mass upon compression. Period. All of those things can be bought, borrowed, or stolen. In this case, stolen."

Plutonium is locked up," Gina protested.

"Security at ninety-nine percent of the reactors in this country is a farce," Jordan snapped. "Any dumb amateur could break the system. But even that isn't necessary. There is always an amount of nuclear waste to be disposed of, and it is taken away in semi-trailer trucks. You don't need pure plutonium to make a bomb. The only difference is the force of the blast. A fifty megaton explosion of a 'dirty' bomb could decimate this area."

Sonny muttered her earlier joke, Castillo glared at him, and Jordan flushed. But she went gamely on with the lecture.

"Probably the easiest thing in the world is stopping a truck. Few witnesses, and if you run the damn thing off the road into a swamp, or something of that nature, nobody's going to look for it until it's missed. And by _that_ time, it's gone down and needle in a haystack has nothing on it." She threw her hands up. "So it's all speculation. Hell, I don't know how realistic it is. It's a bloody crazy thing to do, it's not that difficult but a million and one things could go wrong, and if he is doing it, I don't even know that the target's Miami."

Rico nodded to himself. He'd thought of that during her comments "You're thinking the capital's not that far up the coast?"

Quickly, covertly, her eyes met his and slipped away. "It'd be an awful risk, transporting the bomb that far."

"From what you're saying," Sonny told her, "they could carry the parts and put them together once they got there."

Her fingers tapped nervously on the table. "Yeah, well—"

Castillo interrupted. "This is how we'll play it—"

With one ear on the assignments, Rico watched her pleat her skirt. Her fingers left damp streaks on the purple cotton.

The phone rang. The boss picked it up. "Yes, Yes." He glanced at her. "Consuela."

Jordan nodded. She came around the table and picked it up. "Yes?"

Rico thought he saw her shoulders stiffen a little. Maybe he was imagining it. Did she sound tense? Well, the subject under discussion might make anyone sound tense.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I will. As soon as I can." She hung up the phone, and rested against the table a minute or so. Then she straightened. "I need to go to the ladies'. I'll be back in a minute."

Castillo nodded absently. Gina had handed him a report and he was flipping through it. Rico decided he must have been wrong. She sounded casual enough. He watched through the blinds as she sauntered out of the briefing room, closing the door after herself.

Except that she didn't make the right turn to the john. She headed for the door, and he saw her picking up speed.

Rico knocked his chair over as he jumped to his feet and went for the door. He heard chairs squeak behind him.

The door still swung as he went through it.

She was pressing the elevator button, but when the door cracked against the wall and Rico started down the hall towards her, Jordan Connelly spun.

In a second, she twisted back and dived for the stairs.

He sprinted after her.

Halfway down the first flight, he found her high-heeled pumps on the steps. With one hand, he scooped them up, and kept on running.

At the bottom of the emergency stairs, she fought to get the door open. He landed on both feet. She whirled in a kick that was aimed at a place Rico Tubbs regarded as sensitive and personal. He twisted to take the kick—a good solid hit—on his thigh.

He grinned at her. "I learned that one in New Yawk," he said, broadening his accent.

Her eyes looked gold in the lighting, and if ever he had seen a frightened and desperate woman, she was it. She crouched, fists up, and he softened his voice a little.

"Jordan, to get out that door, you're going to have to hurt me. And hurt me bad. I don't think you really want to do that. Am I wrong?"

Some of the tension melted from her face. "No," she said slowly. "No. You people have all been kind to me. I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Then come back upstairs with me, and let's talk about it." He gestured.

Jordan Connelly, shoulders slumping, passed him and started up the stairs. He put a hand lightly on her arm.

And got the opposite elbow smack in the gut.

He doubled over, with no breath to swear, and swearing mentally in every dialect he knew. Behind him the door creaked open.

 

Oh, damn, oh, _damn_ , I didn't want to have to do that. Jordan yanked the door in and squeezed through it. Weighed two tons and a bloody half, it did—

And Sonny Crockett stood three feet to the other side of it.

She could easily have done with out his sardonic smile.

"Well," he said, "and what have you done with my partner, lady?"

"He's sitting on the stairs getting his breath back. Why don't you go take a look?"

Sonny shook his head, his smile widened. "Why don't we _both_ go take a look, sweetheart?"

She took a step forward, and he backed up. A little healthy respect there. Maybe she could use that ....

On the thought, Jordan began to circle him, slowly. He turned to face her, but he stayed out of arms' reach.

"Jordan," he said softly, coaxingly, "whatever got you so upset, we can handle. C'mon back inside, lady, let us help you. We haven't done so bad so far, have we?"

He made sense. He made too damn much sense. She shook her head, and the peripheral vision showed her Stanley Switek and Larry Zito coming from the corners. Behind her should be a clear shot to her Ford— She backed up.

Into a brick wall. And a scent she knew immediately as the man she'd kissed last night.

Going through Sonny was the only way. She tried to bolt forward. Fingers bit painfully into her arms, and Martin Castillo held her—quite still.

"Damn," she muttered.

Rico came out the door, moving carefully. He still had her heels dangling from one hand. Gina slid out behind him, and took the shoes away.

Trudy ran around the building.

Hail, hail, the gang's all here.

"What was the phone call about?" Martin sounded quiet. About as quiet as a snake about to strike.

"My broker," she said between her teeth. "My stock's dropping."

That got a burst of laughter from Stan; the burst cut off abruptly in the middle, as if he had been the recipient of a Castillo dirty look.

The fingers tightened.

"Ease up, damnit," she told him.

In the same lethal tone, ignoring her words, the man holding her said, "Jordan."

"He put Consuela on the phone so I'd know it was no scam."

"Who?"

She closed her eyes. "Dutch. He's got Consuela and the kids. He's going to kill them if I don't show."

A longer pause. One hand released one arm. "Upstairs."

"Lieutenant," she tried.

He physically made it plain that if she wouldn't walk, she'd be dragged.

Jordan walked. Arguments. Persuasive arguments. She had to come up with several. And damned fast.

Castillo shoved her through the briefing room door, and she caught herself on the table.

"SWAT," he said to Crockett.

"No!" Panic clawed up her throat.

It got her attention. At least from Sonny.

"If you send SWAT in there, he'll kill them."

"That's crazy," Switek contributed. "It's a hostage situation—"

"No, No, it's not." Castillo wasn't paying any apparent attention to her, and he was the one she had to convince. "He doesn't care about them except as a lever for getting to me. If you try to take him, he'll kill them—" she swallowed, "because he knows it'll hurt me. And that's all he cares about."

Nothing.

Sonny sounded soothing. "SWAT's good. They can use the available cover—"

"There is no available cover," she said, hearing her voice rising, struggling to keep the emotion out of it. "That's why I chose the place. All there is is the surrounding wall and the bushes near the windows, and the whole damn front floor wall is almost nothing but glass."

Still nothing. Another argument~- Just last night, was it, he had accused her of making a habit out of arguing? "Look, Lieutenant, you've got a psychiatric case in there with a mother and six scared kids—five. Five scared kids and a fifteen-year-old boy with delusions of Latin machismo. If I trade him for them, you've just me to watch out for. It's a matter of statistics."

He glanced at her. Rock-stone-stubborn-unyielding glanced.

She licked her lips. Something. Anything. Putting both hands flat on the table, she tried the only other thing she could think of at that moment. "Please, Martin. _Please_."

The obsidian eyes, the Set jaw, did not soften.

Jordan dropped into the nearest chair. All of it useless.

No.

Wait.

One more thing .... Clenching her hands on each other, she said in a whisper, "If you keep me out of there, and they are killed, I will blow this entire operation from start to finish."

It was the biggest bluff she'd ever run in her entire misspent life.

She heard the sounds of the others, disbelieving, shocked. She was afraid to look at Castillo.

"I believe you would," he said.

Did he actually sound _amused_? She glanced up at him, wished she hadn't, and lied like a rug. "I don't bluff."

His eyes hardened. The voice sliced like a surgeon's scalpel. "Neither do I." Then, in the next breath, he said, "Crockett, we'll want SWAT for backup." His eyes slewed to her, and he said again, with emphasis, "Backup," He stood up. "Trudy, get surveillance up here, I want a wire on her. Switek, Zito, see what we've got available in service vans. Tubbs, go with Crockett and see how SWAT wants to handle it. Gina, I need those photos of the area." He waited as the room cleared, his eyes fixed on the worn linoleum flooring.

Jordan shut her mouth. She hadn't had to convince him. He had to convince himself.

"You'll do it my way," he said. It was not a request.

Like climbing off a roller coaster, being around him. Jordan nodded. "Remind me to watch how you play chess."

Martin Castillo looked at her and said, "Not a chance."

 

She used the time driving to the house to center. No point in agitation. No point in worrying over how to manage the situation. The situation would develop, and she would have to roll with the punches. The yard looked deserted, of course. Her heels clicked on the walk. She took a long breath, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

"Hello, Dutch." With the casual words, audible to the wire in her purse, Jordan stepped out of her shoes and laid the purse on the credenza.

"Lock the door," he said. The Germanic roll still coated his voice. Apprehension knotted her stomach, but she turned to lock the door, drawing in a slow breath and pulling herself back into control at the same time.

Six-feet-two in stocking feet, two-twenty if an ounce, he held Elena with the ease another man might hold a sack. He balanced a commando knife, complete with six-inch-blade and steel haft, easily in the other hand.

She'd seen him gut a suckling pig in two seconds once, to prove he could.

Are you into little girls now, luv?" She put a bite into it.

Dutch turned absurdly pink and dropped the child. Elena ran to her mother.

Oddly enough, Jordan thought, I remember he used to make whistles for the native kids. He always liked kids.

"It took you long enough," he growled.

"I was with Martin."

"Oh, yes, your spic."

Well, Trudy would be getting an earfuL Or was it the fellows on the wire? "It takes a little while to get dressed, you know."

"You slut."

She laughed. "Darling, I'm a whore, remember? Whores discriminate."

His eyes focussed below her chin "You used to like kids," she said. "Do you really want the little girls to see this?"

"See what?"

She reached up and undid the top button of her blouse. Get the knife away first. "I know what you want, Dutch." She put the seductiveness into it. "I've always known." Another button, another step. "You didn't have to go this far to get my attention."

"You were too involved with Alan."

"Alan's dead."

"What about your spic?"

Aryan to the damn core. You can't handle a man three inches shorter and four stone lighter than you are?" Another step. Another button. He could see all of the gauze and ribbon teddy to her waist now. She saw his tongue dart across his lower lip.

"Come here," he said.

He still held the knife.

Step. Step. Don't hurry. Make him wait.

Hands at her sides, a little away from her body.

Now.

She seized his wrist, the one with the knife, shoving it towards him, and at the same time driving her clenched fist at the bridge of his nose.

His head snapped back. The knife flew across the room.

Jordan kicked him in the kneecap.

He dropped.

Martin's orders— She'd promised to do it his way ....

Diving for the huddled group, she shooed them towards the kitchen, pausing to yank the connecting door closed. She had told herself she would replace that Mickey-Mouse arrangement with something sturdier .... She locked the wholly inadequate lock and rushed for the back door. This one at least had a key lock on both sides.

And it was locked.

"Where the hell's the key!"

"He took it," Raul said.

Jesus _Christ_ —" It was a prayer; did the God of Christians listen to Jews? Especially Jews who weren't sure they were Jews?

A terrible sound came from the outer room. Something thudded against the door, and the door groaned like an animal in pain.

Jordan grabbed the nearest stool and threw it at the window above the kitchen sink. Glass shattered. She tore the curtains down, draping them over the remaining spikes. "Crawl out. Now, damn it, get a move on!"

The door creaked ominously. The knob held better than she had expected. She swung around to the island, yanking the drawer out, searching for the hidden catch. The automatic dropped into her hand.

One of the children cried out.

She half-glanced back. Blood stained the curtains.

The door imploded.

She missed the first shot. The second hit his shoulder. Like clobbering an elephant with an air rifle.

Dutch just kept coming. And he had picked up the fucking knife.

The twenty-two jammed.

With desperate accuracy, she hurled it at him. It should have hit him solidly on his bleeding nose.

He ducked aside.

A second stool— Leaping forward, she brought the wooden thing down across his shoulders.

Dutch toppled.

She jumped his body, felt his wrist almost catch her ankle, and fell through the remnants of the door. Scrabbling to her feet, Jordan ran for the front door. She had to unlock it...

Halfway across the vestibule, her bare feet hit a patch of drying blood. She slipped, fought to catch herself, failed.

Skidding on the marble, she felt skin strip from the inside of her arm. The burn shuddered up her nerves, bright brief pain starring her vision. She twisted around, hearing the sound of Dutch's shoes.

And froze.

Raul was coming through the French doors in the breakfast nook.

"Raul, no!" Too late. At the top of her lungs, as if it could help, she screamed. "Martin!"

The boy, slender as he was, no more than five-foot-tall, bounced off the big blond man.

Effortlessly, as if a half-grown boy could be a football, Dutch snagged Raul out of the air and held him, one arm around his narrow waist, and the other hand holding the razor edge of the wicked great knife at the young dark throat.

She crouched there. Pounding behind her eyes, splitting her skull, Africa shrieked to get out. An old woman's voice

there's someone in my head  
who isn't me

oozed through the crevices and cracks and barriers—

let the tiger free  
summon up the lioness  
whose soul you bear  
remember the blood on the claws  
the blood

"You want him?" Dutch was laughing, that high crazy heart-twisting laugh. "Come and get him, liebchen."

Jordan snarled. And sprang.

Rico helped the last kid out of the back gate, and started him over towards Gina. From the corner of his eyes, he saw the oldest boy—what was the kid's name, anyway?—running through the open gate.

The boy shoved the gate shut behind him, and the damn thing latched. Losing valuable time, Rico fought with the latch until it snapped open. The kid was already through a set of French doors.

Still too far away. Rico dragged his gun out, knowing there'd be a bullet in the chamber.

Jordan's voice, at an impossible decibel and pitch, screamed the Lieutenant's name.

Oh, Santa Maria, just a little more time—

And then he got the view through the open doors.

Dutch, standing in front of the small breakfast table, tossed the young Latino aside like a sack of potatoes. The boy and the wall made a brief and telling acquaintance.

Rico saw the big man's muscles tense, as if he were bracing himself "Halt, Miami Vice!"

Dutch abruptly flew backwards, sliding across the polished table with Jordan on top of him. She had knocked him down?

Propelled—by the force of her attack?—the bizarre couple continued right across the table and out of the half-open windows. Glass sprayed across the lawn. Rico dodged.

Here, the patio was little more than a square of inset mosaic and a few tile steps through the cultivated grass. Dutch hit the grass on his back, and his cry of pain bounced off the stone wall.

The two rolled over and over in the grass. Rico saw steel.

He saw Dutch, on top, raising the knife. Jordan twisted, arching upward, snake-like.

Dutch yelped. The knife dropped from his fingers, stabbing pointfirst into the soil, slicing a thin red weal across her bare shoulder. His fingers wound briefly into her hair, as if to pull her away, and like a cobra she writhed and sunk her teeth into that wrist.

Blood dripped down her face.

She slapped the blond man, both hands to his ears, and when he reared back, Jordan slammed a knee upwards. The blow knocked him off her.

The man wasn't armed, damn it— He couldn't shoot an unarmed man, even a psycho—

And Jordan landed on top of him straddled him, like a grotesque parody of sex. Her fingers wound into his hair, and she yanked his head up, slamming it down onto the earth.

That should stop him.

Wait—

She did it again. And again "Jordan!" Rico got to her, dropped his gun, pulled her off the man.

She fought him, elbows and knees, slithering out of his grasp "I can't hold her!" Where the hell was everybody?

She looked insane, absolutely berserk, and Dutch's eyes had rolled back in his head. She got him a third time.

Castillo ran across the grass as if the uneven ground was paved street. The Lieutenant got her by the elbows, hauling her upwards.

She had her teeth bared, and she jerked at his grip.

With his head almost against her ear, Martin Castillo said something to her, so soft all Rico could identify it as was a name.

And she went limp. "No—" Like Castillo was some Aztec priest tearing her heart out.

He pulled her away from the body.

Rico checked. Still breathing. Not even a bad pulse. Pity. Over his shoulder, he saw the Lieutenant turn her to face him. Castillo pulled out a folded handkerchief and began to wipe her face, with one hand, sliding the other over the cut marring her smooth skin.

"What did I do?" she muttered, as if asking about another person, someone—Rico thought fancifully—she didn't really know well. "What did I do?"

Her white blouse had burst across the shoulders and down one side. At this angle, Rico could see the one-piece lingerie, the ribbons hiding very little of her breasts. He stood up, as the medical people came bounding up, and started to pull off his jacket. She might as well have been naked.

Martin forestalled him, by taking off his own suitcoat, and putting her arms into it, then buttoning it up the front. She wouldn't meet his eyes. She shivered, and wrapped her arms around her stomach.

Through chattering teeth, she said, fiercely, "I am not going to be sick. Do you hear me?"

"Yes." Castillo took her into the house.

Sonny's feet stopped in front of Rico. Rico looked at his partner.

Sonny's face turned almost grey.

"Did you see that?" Crockett sounded disbelieving.

Rico remembered a day in the briefing room. "Crockett, my man, you were _spared_."

 

She still shivered as he escorted her back into the house.

Martin said several things silently to himself, as he looked at the evidences of destruction. Long scratches destroyed the top of the mahogany table. Glass shards sparkled in the afternoon sun, covering marble and table—not the small rounded powdery remnants of safety glass, but the long jagged easy-to-avoid leftovers of glass made before safety was a thought.

A heavy dark smudge marred the white plaster wall next to the table. Beside him, Jordan paused, resisting his attempts to urge her onward.

"Raul?"

"Concussion," he told her. "They've taken him and the rest of them to the hospital."

She nodded. With unusual docility, she allowed herself to be led into the house and down into the sunken living room.

Shock? "Do you have brandy?"

"In the k-kitchen." Her teeth still chattered.

Shock. He raided the kitchen, finding a small liquor stock in a lower cabinet. The cognac had never been opened; neither had most of the bottles, though a fifth of Jamaican rum was not quite half-full. Castillo poured a tumbler and brought it to her.

At the first swallow, she shuddered. She tried to hand him the glass.

"Drink it."

"Si, jefe," she said. Irony coming back—she must be feeling better. The second swallow caused a grimace; she finished it with the third. "God, that's awful.

"Why do you keep it?"

"For emergencies." She set the glass down on the coffee table. "I guess this counted as a emergency."

He almost smiled, but her next comment wiped it.

"Remind me," and her voice fractured like the window glass, all edges, "not to leave my personal papers out around you."

"I did what was necessary."

"You didn't have to call me that."

"It stopped you."

"So would a clip across the back of the neck!" Her voice cut off the shout abruptly, and Jordan Connelly pressed her lips together, as if to keep herself from shouting again.

"I needed you awake."

"You needed—You needed—!" She came to her feet all at once, like a lioness in a cage, and her hands clenched. "What the hell about what I needed? I didn't need that from you!"

"In case of contact—"

He got a Portuguese answer impugning his birth, manhood, and probable cause of death. Jordan obviously was not inclined to be reasonable—and he was not inclined to cater to her emotions.

"Do you still want out of the operation?"

That rocked her. Most of the anger left her eyes. She shook her head.

"Then," he told her, still cold. "keep in mind that I'm in charge and I run this investigation."

She looked embarrassed, and maybe a little sullen as well. "You don't understand—"

"Explain it to me."

Jordan turned away from him. "You sounded like him. You don't usually, but for a second—"

"Then it worked."

She nodded, wearily.

Another logical question occurred to him. "Would you rather I let you commit murder?"

"He's earned it."

Well, he should have expected that reaction. "You aren't judge and jury."

"No," Jordan said. "And I'm not civilized either."

If she were to crack on him at some crucial point, it could be—messy. Very.

"But," she added, with an uncanny air of reading his thoughts, "I'm trying to learn. I won't 'go native' on you, Lieutenant."

Martin accepted it at face value. "Good,"

"What else do you need from me?"

"Do you think Fox set this up?"

A long pause. Jordan shook her head, but did not turn. "I think —Dutch had gotten to the point where Fox couldn't control him any longer. Fox knew how Dutch would react to seeing me. Fox expected this. Expected you to do it, probably. Fox has never seen me kill anyone. It's not a thing I advertise."

And, from what Consuela Socarres said, until Jordan had gone berserk, she'd tried fairly hard to simply stop the man. "And I was introduced as an assassin."

She nodded

"Any way of confirming that guess?"

"Well," and she shrugged, "I daresay that when Fox sets up the third meeting, we can ask him."

"You expect a third meeting."

"Oh, yes. One way or another."

That sounded like trouble. "Jordan—"

She swung around. A bruise was beginning to show high on her left cheekbone, and traces of blood still marked her mouth. "I give you my word, Martin. I will be under control."

Oddly enough, he believed her.

 

When she woke, her mouth tasted of sand and cotton and the disgusting bitter taint of fear. Jordan lay in the moonlight trying to wake herself up thoroughly. She felt like that woman in the—Fuseli?—painting, weighted down by the nightmare—

Tea. Tea and a lot of sugar, and if she were going to indulge herself, she'd finish off that package of biscuits as well.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped. The drapes had been drawn in the living room, and the broken windows boarded up, so the house was darker than usual. But from below she distinctly heard breathing.

She tightened her grip on the Smith and Wesson, brought along out of habit, and demanded, "Who's there?"

Sounds of people waking—people. Two separate sets of feet scraping on the marble.

"It's Gina," a female voice said. "And Trudy, Jordan."

Was that all? Getting jumpy in her senescence. "I didn't know I had company."

"The Lieutenant asked us to stay. You were asleep."

"I was drunk," Jordan responded. "Brandy on an empty stomach does bizarre things to my system." She continued down the stairs, knowing the house well enough to maneuver in the dark. In the living room, one of the women fumbled about; the lightswitch clicked and light, softened by pleated silk shades, flooded the downstairs. "Sorry to awaken you."

"Are you all right?" Gina stood up, bare-footed, and shoved her thick black hair out of her eyes. Trudy, by the switch, just watched her.

"I'm starved," Jordan replied. And she was, suddenly. "Want to come and help me raid the fridge?"

They exchanged a glance. "Sure," said Trudy. "What have you got?"

"Don't know yet. I don't do the cooking." She considered it, laughed shortly, and said, "I can't."

"Can't what?" Gina flipped the overhead light on in the kitchen.

"Can't cook."

"You can't cook?" Trudy sounded astonished.

Opening the door, Jordan crouched in front of it and contemplated the shelves. "Oh, I can do breakfasty sorts of things—if you don't ask me to fry eggs—and I can make a decent sheperd's pie and I can open tins. If I you call that cooking, I can cook. Otherwise, Consuela cooks for me." She pulled out carefully-wrapped packages. "I can make tea. We have leftover roast beef here, and cheese, and bread—anybody feel like a sandwich?" She passed the foil packages back, dug out the bread, and stood up to shut the door with a shove of one hip.

"Bad dreams?" Gina again.

Jordan sighed. "Yeah. But I'll be all right. Always am."

"This happen often?" Now Trudy Were they taking turns?

"Often enough."

"Sometimes doctors—" Gina. They must be taking turns.

"I've seen a doctor. He offered me sleeping pills." Jordan began to stack beef and cheese on bread. She paused to turn the fire on under the kettle. "I don't like pills. I'm fine. Unless insanity is contagious."

And there it was. What if she were like Alan? What if he had rubbed off on her enough—

"We're not crazy," Trudy said.

"But Alan was." Oh, damn, she hadn't meant to say that either. The slices of cheese ran out—she'd have to cut more, and that meant— "Just a minute." She climbed up onto the counter, and found the spare key in the rhododendron pot. Unlocking the drawer, she took out the carving knife and started to slice the cheese. Not until she looked across the island at Gina's startled eyes did she remember that normal people did not lock up knives.

"Do you always do that?" Trudy laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Old habits die hard." Jordan sat down on the stool. "It wasn't that he tried to hurt me. He never— Even on the bad days, he never tried to hurt _me_. He just—I had to keep the knives locked up. And I hid the guns, of course."

"How long?"

"Two years. Before he died. The doctor was sympathetic—here I guess they call it post-traumatic stress syndrome, complicated by tertiary syphilis." She was ashamed of the last words, as ashamed as he had been.

"Did you—"

"No, I don't know why. I should have had it, God knows, but I didn't I catch." The words, escaping, seemed to take weight with them. "But sometimes I remember what it was like, and I can't sleep—"

That's what we're here for," Trudy said, gently, and the hand on Jordan's shoulder squeezed.

For once, there seemed to be no judgement behind the words. A smile came more easily than she thought it could. "Thank you." She glanced at Gina, sitting across the island. "Thank you both."


	9. Chapter 9

March 26 , 1986

Martin Castillo glanced over at the woman sitting next to him. Jordan looked calm.

Calm before the storm. He distrusted that sort of control.

The Miami skies had the same sort of calm, a dull greyish overcast air, with the tensely electric sense of waiting rain. It reminded him, a little, of jungles he had known, of strategy carried out under ominous conditions.

Even the warehouse, no different than three days ago, had an air of foreboding.

So he was imagining things. "Are you ready?"

She stirred finally, and looked at him. "As ready as I'll ever be." She rubbed her side, where the wire was taped. The flak jacket she wore covered it but let sound carry.

§§§

"We need a wire in there," he had said at the briefing.

Her eyes had narrowed a little, thoughtfully, and then she said, "I'd better wear it."

Sonny objected. As usual. "Why you?"

"Because by this point, Fox trusts me more. And if he tries to search me now, he knows I'll object. Violently. And since l've got less mobility, Lieutenant Castillo ought to have all the freedom possible."

"No arguments against the idea?" Crockett sounded like he was angling for a fight.

The green eyes came up, and she surveyed him thoughtfully. "I trust you lot to know your business, luv."

"Even yesterday?"

"Crockett," Castillo said, tired of the bickering.

"It's all right." Jordan looked at Sonny. They were almost the same age. At the moment, she looked much—younger. "I knew Dutch." A hesitation. "I lost a friend to him, once. I didn't want to lose anyone else."

In the silence, Sonny nodded.

"And if I should lose my way on this," she said, humor edging her voice with a heavy black border, "l'm certain you'll tell me where to go, Detective."

Quite abruptly, Sonny Crockett grinned. "It's a deal."

§§§

"Let's go," he said, opening the car door.

The sky smelt of rain. Beneath the soles of his shoes, the marshy ground squelched unpleasantly.

A small black hand shoved the warehouse door open. Sanger, grinning widely—maybe the obviously false teeth wouldn't let him do anything else—stepped out and aside to let them enter. The corridor down felt as cramped and phobia-causing as it had the last time he walked it.

Too many small spaces in the past. Tight spaces were death traps.

Sanger spoke to Jordan, in a guttural language not like anything used up to this point. She answered him, briefly, with the rising inflection common to questions. Another guttural reply, followed by a rich bass chuckle.

"Qué?" How good was her Spanish?

She answered, hesitantly, in that queer blending of dialect Cuban and dialect Portuguese. Her Spanish might have gotten her a cup of Cafe Cubano, but that was it. At least the dialects were similar, and it was a simple message.

"Sanger says Fox is sick in his body, and the sickness has spread to his heart and brain."

As if they didn't already know it. On the other hand, they shouldn't know it—yet.

Fox, leaning back in a wicker peacock chair, looked as if he had aged overnight. His narrow slanted eyes squinted further shut, taking in their appearance. Noting, Martin suspected, every centimeter of the bruise on Jordan's face and the long scrape on her bare arm.

He kept a hand on Jordan's back. Beneath his fingers, the long muscles rippled and tightened, as if she might bristle like a cat.

In English, calmly, precisely, Jordan Connelly said, "You son of a bitch. What in the hell possessed you to let that refugee from a mental ward out by himself?"

Uncurling his long legs, the Oriental stood up slowly. "I take it something's happened?"

"You take it fucking right!" she snapped.

Martin squeezed her arm.

Her head came round, and she faced him for maybe five seconds before she nodded, as shortly as her phrases, and took a long slow breath.

"Your pet nutcase," she went on, "invaded my home, threatened my housekeeper and her children, put her oldest son in the hospital, and tried damned hard to do the same to me!" She quelled the increasing volume of her voice with another breath, and said, low and deadly, "Are you saying you knew nothing about it?"

"I knew nothing about it."

What Castillo could read of Kent Fox's body language and facial expression said that the older man was not surprised. The two Cuban twins glanced at each other, like the reflections in a mirror.

§§§

Switek had come in puffing, with an open file in his meatcutter palms. "Got it, Lieutenant. Ciro and Raymon Alvarez, alias Luis and Antonio Vaquello, alias Benito and Alfredo Morales. Came off the last boatload from Papa Fidel. Informants list them as part of Havana's Blue Book—smuggling, murder, extortion, but convicted on—get this—morals charges, sentenced to life in a Cuban Alcatraz, but pardoned just especially for Uncle Sam. And all this before they were able to drink in Miami.

Just made twenty-five last month."

"They look older," Jordan said.

A snort from Crockett answered. "Well, that kind of lifestyle will put a few character lines on your face, sweetheart."

And they sound like real characters," Trudy contributed.

Crockett added something else, thoughtfully, staring into his cup of coffee. "How does that record stack up to Dutch's?"

Jordan went very quiet. Finally she said, "It doesn't."

And Sonny's hazel eyes moved up the line, with an unspoken comment of 'push them hard'. Martin had not bothered to say that he intended to take over.

§§§

"What happened?" inquired Fox.

"What do you think?" she countered.

Fox turned a placid—satisfied?—gaze to Martin. "You?"

Martin looked at his partner, who looked back at him, and in tandem, as if they hadn't discussed how to handle this ahead time, they smiled at each other.

The Alvarez brothers watched him. He remembered their reactions to Dutch. Even hardened criminals knew to watch out for insanity. Now, perhaps, he had taken that place in their hierarchy If Jordan had taken the credit, then she would have ceased to be a woman to them. Maybe he should have.... No point in second-guesses. Go on with it.

Fox nodded. "I apologize for the difficulty." He eased back into chair. "l'll make it worth your while."

"Didn't expect to earn hazard pay here," she said dryly.

He waved a hand in dismissal. The bones showed clearly under the sallow skin, and the veins stood out like blue in marble. "It also appears I now require your services, Señor Santoyo." In the past few days, the man's accent had improved.

Martin waited.

"At a substantial increase in compensation."

"I agree."

"Good."

Jordan crossed to where a concrete conduit rose partially from the floor to form an upside-down 'J', and settled onto it. "All right. Let's hear it, shall we?"

And in a few short sentences, the old man confirmed her nightmare. A semitrailer would leave the reactors at Fort Pierce and come south to the Port of Miami, where the waste plutonium could be transferred and hauled out to sea.

"You want me," clearly for the surveillance, "to help you hijack plutonium?"

"Yes."

Beautiful technique.

"What are you planning to do with this?" she continued.

Fox sighed. "What do I specialize in?"

Martin noted that the two young Cubans split up. They did it gradually, skillfully, Ciro coming forward, and Raymond easing around closer to Jordan. He waited to see if she'd noticed, and almost on cue, her green-gold eyes slid over to him. He let his eyes tell her he knew.

"No, no, it's not that easy. You give it to me, in words of one syllable, because I don't think even you are that—" Her voice died away into silence.

"I intend," he said, "to build a bomb. I intend to use it to get a great deal of money from the United States government. Very simple."

"Very crazy," Jordan replied sourly. "You want to tell me what happens if something goes wrong?"

"Part of your pay will be a plane flight to England, before I start."

She twisted to look at Martin, still across the room. He met her eyes and nodded, reassuring her and confirming her orders.

"All right," she said, "but that's three tickets. Martin, my mother, and myself. And make it Switzerland while you're at it."

"Switzerland?"

"I have friends in Switzerland. And the government asks less questions than the Brits."

Fox's eyebrows lifted. "I suppose the fact that C15 has warnings posted for one Martin Santoyo has nothing to do with it?"

She shook her head. "Got it in one, did you?"

Ciro Alvarez spoke, in Spanish, with the words directed at Martin, and his eyes on Jordan. "What kind of success rate does your broad have?" He used jeba again in referring to her.

Jordan stiffened

Martin straightened. He took time about it, letting the warning come up through his body into his eyes. In his own dialect, a little higher-class than the young man's, he said, "How exactly did you mean to refer to my lady?"

Raymond started to step forward Easily, she slid off the conduit and produced her gun. "It's only a twenty-two," she told the younger man, "but at this range I won't miss your eyes, and it's your choice, luv—the hard or the soft option."

Ciro had stopped.

Martin took a gliding step forward, putting the target in range.

Still no response.

He studied the defiance, studied the stance, summed it up.

And acted.

One quick strike, the ball of his foot, encased in leather, to the target's guts. The boy doubled over, his yelp of pain disappearing into the echoes of the warehouse.

Raymond swore, and started forward, as if he really thought Jordan wouldn't shoot.

On the other hand, she didn't.

Instead, she kicked him, side kick, with the knife edge of her foot. Squarely in the traditional spot. He didn't even groan; his eyes rolled back in his head and he went down.

She put the gun away.

Sanger's laugh sounded like a bird's whistle. "Didn't I tell you the lioness had returned, commander? And brought a lion with her?"

Fox did not exactly smile. "I see."

His target managed to get to his knees. Martin crouched by him, out of range. "Well?"

"I—" Breathless. "Meant no disrespect to your lady."

"Better,"

"Ciro," Fox said, "perhaps you should help your brother into the back."

It was almost painful to watch, the walking wounded dragging the non-walking wounded. On the other hand, definitely greater respect showed in Ciro's eyes.

He hadn't felt that much fury regarding mere words in months. Hadn't released that much fury into physical violence in a longer time.

"All right," Jordan said. "If the floor show's over, why don't you do me a favor and tell me when you want this lot?"

Seven days."

"A week?" Outrage struggled with laughter. "You don't want much, do you, mate?"

"Can you do it?"

Challenge.

Her chin jutted out suddenly, and her green eyes narrowed.

"Damn straight. Seven days. An thing else you need, luv?

Castillo frowned. She was pushing it.

Fox said something. Not in any language Martin knew. The sound of the words reminded him of Sanger's voice. Obviously it meant something to Jordan, because her body tensed, and the color drained out of her face.

She did not meet his eyes, any of their eyes, this time.

"Not here," she said. "Not now."

"Haven't you told him?" A taunt.

"That's none of your business, Fox."

"Doesn't 'the law' the old woman taught you say that if you're asked properly you have to oblige?"

" _Don't push me_." A clear threat. "You won't like it," she told him.

He only smiled. And said the phrase to her again, as if it were something learned carefully, by rote.

Jordan snarled at him, baring her teeth. Then, she said, "Martin—"

But he knew what was coming, and switched into the Spanish he knew Fox could not speak. "No, Whatever he wants of you, if you do it, I stay. I will not leave you alone with him. Understand?"

"Sí." Flat and still. Her left hand, with the plain gold band on the third finger, disappeared into the deep pocket of the oversized sleeveless jacket. The skin bag she produced smelt of spice and musk, even in the large open space of the warehouse. "I need a fire. And it has to be wood."

Sanger, without being instructed appeared with a stone in his arms. In the center of the grey sedimentary rock, a deep hollow held twigs and kindling. He lit it from—Martin felt sudden foreboding—a flint and steel, not a match.

"And," Jordan said, "you have to pay me."

Fox got up, with the grace of a much younger and healthier man, and drew out a knife.

She hissed at him, no words, only an angry sound before the words. "White man's metal, put it back, you know better!"

And her voice carried a peculiar low crooning note, in spite of the hiss, something not at all Anglo.

Santería, his mind told him, and then reversed the decision. No, not quite. Though somewhere, sometime, he could just recall that quality of timbre, of authority.

From the skin bag she took several things: a necklace, first, of ivory, a small knife of a dull cream color, a handful of twigs and leaves and strange mottled berries, and a few long twisted spills of bark. Martin, on his feet, watched her crouch by the hollow stone. He noted several things, with a somewhat uneasy sensation walking on butterfly feet down his spine.

The ivory strung on the knotted cord bore stains. Dull mahogany stains, the color of old dried blood—and no wonder, because the pendants happened to be a set of teeth and claws. Sanger's words referred to a lioness. Martin suspected those particular natural knives had not come from a souvenir stand. The knife—the dull cream color came from ivory, also. Lion again? Jordan handled it as if it might be quite sharpedged. Even from where he stood, he caught a faint whiff of spice, almost cinnamon, mingled with a stronger musky fragrance. Pleasant and irritating at the same time.

Her voice now adopted a cadence and a guttural tone that reminded him even more of Santería rituals. Excepting that, once again, she used an unfamiliar dialect, no Spanish, no Portuguese, no German in it at all.

The wiry black man squatted across from her, with his huge eyes half-lidded, swaying on his haunches while she chanted. He hummed in concert with her words, a queer unpleasant/pleasant descant that seemed to draw isolation around the three—Jordan, Sanger, Fox—like the veil in a temple.

To this point, Martin Castillo had not really thought of Fox as rival. As an adversary, yes. As a rival for the loyalty of the woman crouched in front of the tiny flickering fire—

She sprinkled the handful of native incense over the flames. A sharp burning odor permeated the room, succeeded by a sickly-sweetish odor that diffused and strengthened in waves.

Sharp pains stabbed from his nostrils into his brain, as if the smoke hurt.

Jordan cut across her palm with the bone knife. His estimate of its edge was on the mark—her skin, on the scarred left hand, parted as easily as butter. A narrow scarlet line, fresh blood, leaped along the edges of the cut. She spoke to Fox, and when he answered, she tossed the knife into the air, caught the point with the finesse of a juggler, and gave it to him hilt-first.

When blood welled up in his palm she retrieved the knife, laid it on the stone, and cupped her hands under his. Blood dripped in slow clockwork ritual drops from his body to hers.

She spilled the blood into the fire.

The smell of that, reminded him of other days. He remembered the odor from Thailand—from a bombed-out house and a trail littered with dying men—and how for three months afterwards the smell of cooked beef had made him—ill.

Fox's voice, speaking comprehensibly in English, jolted Martin back to the present.

"Tell me what you see in my future

She sounded younger. Her voice held the innocence of a young girl, eager and intelligent, and a little frightened. "It runs so deep— It's so dark, that far in—"

"I need to know, Jordan. Tell me what the little bones tell you."

Now the sweetness faded from her Voice, the youthfulness. She sounded like the woman he knew, but wiser, gentler—and more sinister. "No one wants to see his future, man. We only want to see our hopes confirmed. "I tell only truth here."

"I know, mother." Like a Japanese man speaking to a prophetess—

The flash of memory eluded him. With one eye and half his mind on her, he tried to track it down. The pain in his head settled into a dull constant throb, mostly behind his eyes. His vision blurred slightly.

"The truth runs very cold, very bitter—" A singsong note entered her words. "You seek death. You seek satisfaction. You leave little behind you, man. Before you is fire. Before you is death. Before you is satisfaction, even though it wears a face you have not known—"

"And Jordan Connelly?" The old man leaned forward, his narrow eyes slitting like a cat's. "Do you see her as well?"

She shook her head, as if rejecting the notion. Her voice slowed, deepened, broadened. "Fire, And death. And life I will see no further."

The scent—he recognized it. Drug sweet. Some kind of native hallucinogen.

I won't go native on you.

And yet she had.

She quoted suddenly, from some seventies rock group. Martin almost knew the quote. "There is no dark side of the moon—It's all dark. All dark." At the same time, she began to rock slowly back and forth on her heels, like a woman in mourning, while the sickly perfume of whatever ritual cult she practiced fogged the air of the room.

Sanger still hummed, but the descant softened, became almost a lullaby, a croon. At the same time, his eyes drooped completely shut. His music halted. He breathed the rhythmic heavy breaths of someone asleep.

Jordan said nothing at all, rocking back and forth on her heels, with her arms wrapped protectively around her belly.

Fox put a hand out.

Easily, as if she did no more than shift to a more comfortable position, Jordan twitched away from the touch. In an almost conversational tone, she said to the flames. "You read Kipling. I am the cat who walks alone, and all places are alike to me.

The older man stood, all in one motion, with his thin lips pressed hard together.

He hadn't expected that, had he?

Even if it were a ritual, surely she should be coming out of the trance now.

"Blood for blood," she said. "The blood pays for all—Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?"

Memory hit.

§§§

She had been young—not more than fifteen, and Oriental—Vietnamese, and blind. And Trang had suggested they go see the fortuneteller brought in to Saigon from some northern village.

In smoke with the poisonous-flower scent of hashish, the thin frail hands turned over a set of finger bones, scraped flat on one side. When he rattled them between his palms, as asked, they felt disgustingly warm and damp. And he had known they were dry.

The pale-blue eyes stared blindly at him, very wrong in the delicate porcelain face. "I see trouble in your bones," she told him. "Your past is painful—you feel guilt at leaving your name and family. Before you is happiness, but only fleeting. If you have the courage, happiness can find you twice. You will not find what you seek until years pass and you stop looking, and what you want will come to you. But not here."

There was more. The words escaped him. But he remembered asking—not certain if he believed her—if he could come again.

"I will not be here."

A bomb took out that entire block two days later, while he was in the hill country.

§§§

Suddenly Jordan's trance seemed unnatural. He crossed the intervening distance, and knelt to touch her shoulder. At the last minute, he wondered what he would do if she flinch ed from him.

But she didn't.

She turned, just her head, with eyes in which the iris was only a thin golden rim around the enormous vacant pupil blind eyes. "But that was another country," she said, "and besides, the wench is dead."

He quoted back to her, softly. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy. Jordan, come back."

"I didn't used to be afraid of the dark ...."

He glanced up, sharply, aware all at once that the fire was dying. And that, sometime in the past two minutes, they had been left alone in the room.

"Jordan," he said. "Jordan, come out of it. It's over."

A great sigh. She shook her head, but as if to clear it. Now, sounding drugged and foggy, she said, "In too deep. Went in—too deep."

He squeezed her shoulder, and felt her flinch in pain. Her pupils shrank to something near-normal.

"I hear you. If you had objected—I wouldn't have—gone in." She shuddered, all over. "Oh, my head."

Not surprising. "Can you walk?"

"Yes," she said, rocking back and rising. She staggered, almost crumpled, and he grabbed her, using his strength against her weight.

"No," she said. "Yes. I'll manage."

If he carried her, it put him at an extreme disadvantage. "Jordan. Listen to me. You have to walk. I can't carry you."

Her head swung towards him. "You need me to walk."

"Yes."

She swallowed air, and he felt her pulling strength out of somewhere. "l'll walk."

In tandem, they exited the warehouse. The door shut with a hollow boom, the sound of steel and isolation. In front of them, he saw nothing, heard nothing around them. He clenched his teeth, suspicious of the silence, of the emptiness.

Jordan moved like a sleepwalker—like a marionette. Her pupils had contracted to normal size, but she looked glassy in the cloud-filtered sunshine.

All the way down the freshly-gravelled path, with the small staccato beats of the stones pattering against the car's under-carriage, Castillo held the uneasy feeling of an adversary at his back.

Next to him, the woman sat in the same puppet's position, wooden and tense.

"You can relax."

For a moment, he wondered if she could still hear him. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw her head nod, once, as if it weighed too much to move. Her lips parted a little; he heard her sigh.

Jordan let her head fall back and went limp.

He reached over to check her pulse: erratic, first weak, and slow, then weak and rapid.

With her eyes shut, she said, "'M'fine. Just—groggy. Always am. 'M'fine."

He glanced over at her face. The fine smooth skin had no color at present—except for great bluish circles forming under her eyes, like bruises.

To himself, he said, Like hell.

 

Rico said Crockett's name once.

Sonny sat up. "What?"

"I don't like the looks of this. Are we clear?"

"I haven't noticed anyone but us undercover types." Crockett opened his door.

Rico swung his out as well, and started for Castillo's car. Martin got out of the driver's side, with uncharacteristic haste, moving around to the passenger door.

With Sonny on his heels, the two detectives reached their boss in time to hear Jordan. She sounded querulous and slurred.

"I can walk."

Sotto voce, Crockett said, "If _she_ can walk, I can fly."

And Rico agreed, not surprized at all when her knees buckled under her as she tried to stand.

Castillo caught her, getting one arm under her wobbly legs and the other under her arms.

"Too heavy." The irritated tone was more pronounced. "You'll hurt yourself."

"Put your arms around my shoulders."

At the snap in the boss' voice, Ricardo Tubbs stepped back, surprised. Castillo rarely bit that hard. What had happened?

Her eyes opened, and the pupils stayed huge.

Drugged out of her skull, Santa Maria ....

"Rico," and now some of the sharpness left the other man's voice, "take the keys out of her jacket pocket."

His hand slid across the smoothness of some kind of skin bag; when he touched it, Jordan twitched and made some Voiceless complaint.

"Portate bien, chica," Martin Castillo said

Something like a smile crossed her face. She shut her eyes and said, "Sí, jefe."

Rico grinned—and wiped it when the black eyes flicked up. He went and unlocked the door

Sonny said, "What happened?"

The Lieutenant turned sideways to edge through the door. Her head lay on his shoulder, with the braid trailing reddish-gold down his black shirt. Against the dull black linen, her tanned arms looked as white as Scarlett O'Hara's must have been. It seemed almost as if he intended not to answer, but as he got to the steps down into the living room, Crockett hurried to catch up and stand below in case—unlikely—of difficulty. On the lower Step, Martin paused and met the younger man's eyes. "Fox forced her to take a drug. A hallucinogen."

Jordan chuckled.

It stopped them all a second, that low chuckle coming out of nowhere.

Rico strained to hear the words following.

"You have a funny definition of forced," she murmured.

Harshly, Castillo said, "Shut up." In the next moment, he eased her down onto her feet, and further down onto the couch.

"Oh, _God_." A thin greenish line spread around her mouth. "The morning after is definitely not worth the night before." But the slurring had almost disappeared.

"Put your feet up," said the boss, "and your head down."

"Don't I even get a pillow?"

Crockett, with a look on his face that expressed a desperate desire not to break into laughter, immediately offered to get one, and disappeared up the curving stairs. Rico, with no escape route in sight, put his hand over his mouth.

Jordan obeyed the directive. The greenish tint flooded more of her skin. "No damn ventilation—"

"I know."

To Tubbs' amazement, he caught a brief glimpse of _Martin Castillo_ looking as if he wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

Her eyes opened. "Are you all right? I never thought—"

"Don't think." The words came out rough as a file. More gently, the boss said, "It's no problem."

"Gives you a hell of a headache."

"Yes."

Her eyelids drooped shut, the long colorless lashes almost invisible against the skin. "I broke my promise —said I wouldn't go native on you—"

"Be quiet." Not so harsh, now. "It's not important."

Crockett bounded down the stairs, clutching a large pillow in one hand.

The boss stepped aside. Sonny crouched to slide it under her head.

When she looked at him, he smiled—well Rico said to himself, a day of surprises—and spoke softly.

"Hey, there, lady, how's the head?"

"I'd like to give it to charity," she said dryly, "but I doubt they'd take it."

"You know what they say," he continued, deftly adjusting the pillow.

"No, but I suspect you'll tell me."

"Just lie back and enjoy it."

She groaned.

"Thank you, gentlemen, " Castillo interrupted firmly.

Rico lingered a little, lagging behind his partner. As if their presence had been forgotten, the boss leaned over to speak to the woman on the couch.

"How is it?"

"Fine."

"I'll go back to the office, then, to get that information. Will you be all right?"

"I'll be fine, Martin. Go on."

He almost turned, and Rico slid hastily to the open door. But at the last minute the boss paused, and Rico halted to catch the words.

"Call me if you need me."

Making a prudent exit, Rico caught Sonny at the Cadillac. They waited, again on stakeout, while their boss got into his car and left.

"You got an opinion on that?" Rico asked.

Sonny glanced at him, deadpan. "None at all, man. I ain't crazy."

And then he grinned.


	10. Chapter 10

April 3, 1986

"Look sharp, ladies," Sonny Crockett said, in his all-business tone, "it seems to me that's all of them. How's the wire sounding?"

Through the wires apparently leading to the Walkman fastened to his waist, Gina Calabrese's soft words sounded calm and reassuring.

"Clear as your morning hangover, Sonny."

He grinned a little. "Good thing it ain't my conscience." He adjusted the infrared binoculars, and picked up his partner's form in the tree across the field. Picked him up because his belt buckle caught a gleam of light—headlights moonlight, something or another—and blinked for a fraction of a second. "Gina, tell Rico to smear something over whatever silver he's wearing, will you? I don't think our friends below believe in magpies."

"Right." A pause, static, and then, "Rico says thanks."

"Yeah." Sonny wished he hadn't given up the weed. A cigarette would've kept his hands occupied. It occurred to him, for about the twenty-fifth time, that if Martin and Jordan were blown just now, none of the outside backup could get in there in time to do anything about it. For the twenty-fifth time, he shoved the nasty thought back where it belonged.

A more pleasant memory intruded, with the juxtaposition of Rico and Jordan, and Sonny smiled to himself. Nice to know even mercenaries' widows could be prone to bouts of sheer silliness—of course, nothing wrong with releasing tension....

§§§

"There." She straightened. "Half-done."

"Only half?" Sonny leaned over her shoulder.

"You're steaming up my glasses, Detective," was Jordan's matter-of-fact comment.

He hadn't tried to resist a grin. "Oh? Is that an invitation?"

Her head turned, and she observed him through the square-rimmed eyeglasses.

"I'm too old and sedate for you, luv."

At that, he had laughed.

"Half-done," she said, with a grin.

"Now I just have to plan the fine details, such as stopping the bloody truck, don't I?" She shoved her coffee cup at him. "So be a nice policeman, stop steaming up my glasses, and bring me another cup of battery acid, eh?"

"You're going to float away, lady."

She raised an eyebrow. "I could pop dexies, but it might get me in a bit of trouble, don't you think? Besides, at two in the a and m, a woman's entitled to coffee."

A sudden filthy comment jumped into his head, about the other things a woman might be entitled to at two a.m., but before he could voice it, Jordan looked at him and said, "Don't say it."

"Say what?"

"What's written all over your face, mate."

He went out snickering as Rico came in.

When he came back,Stan was leaning into the doorway of the briefing room, and the sound of some old rock blared out into the rest of the office.

"What in the hell—" Sonny figured he could be forgiven the shock, but he'd never seen anybody polka to the Beatles before. Come to think of it, he'd never seen his partner polka at all, but Rico and Jordan were tearing around the room at an absolutely ridiculous pace, with more enthusiasm than grace. On the last few bars, Rico almost swung her into the table. As if it had been rehearsed, Jordan stepped up onto the top of it. The swirl of her cotton skirt showed her long full legs almost to her panties—Sonny glimpsed sea-green lace. She spun across the formica, as Rico moved in tandem, reaching up to pull her down and onto the floor. She collapsed on the nearest chair, in totally abandoned laughter. Crockett's normally reserved partner bent over double.

And the funniest part of it was when Sonny realized that someone stood behind him and turned around to find Lieutenant Nothing-Amuses-Me wiping a grin.

§§§

"Few enough laughs in the world," Crockett muttered to himself.

In his ear, Gina said, "What was that?"

"Nothing. Anything going on in there yet?"

"No. I'll let you know."

Sonny inhaled and exhaled heavily, wishing for a breeze and the deck of the _St. Vitus Dance._

The reel of tape wound steadily along. Trudy, with her eyes half-closed and one hand under her chin, watched it spin.

"She sounds good," Gina said.

"You mean convincing?"

"Yeah."

Trudy considered it. "Yeah I'd believe her."

Jordan Connelly's British-tainted voice came through the headphones as if she were speaking on stage. Down the line, one-two-three, just as she'd run through it for them in the office.

§§§

"Wait a minute," Gina said, "you never said how to stop the truck."

"Oh," Jordan examined her notes. "Didn't I now?"

"No," and Trudy added in her two cents then, "you missed that."

They both got a look that told them Jordan had indeed left that part out—deliberately. Now the tall woman shrugged. "Eh, well, so we nick a couple of detour signs, set 'em up in the road and send our party down a blind alley, don't we?"

§§§

As if reading her mind, Gina said, "I'd like to know what she's got up her sleeve."

"You thinking about her song and dance regarding stopping the truck?"

"Yeah." Gina refocussed the binoculars. "He's going in. That makes—five. Unless they bring in extras, that should be it. You got an opinion on the subject?"

Trudy Joplin listened to the words coming over the receiver. "If I had to lay odds, I'd say she's planning to go in with them."

"The Lieutenant won't stand for that."

§§§

"We're a team. They've accepted that," Castillo told them, flatly, not trying to reassure anyone. "Whatever one of us says, the other backs up. It works."

Trudy noticed that Jordan glanced at him, under her lashes, with an odd secretive look.

§§§

"I think maybe she figures if she brings it out in there, he won't argue."

Gina shook her head, her black hair flying. "I've been listening to the Lieutenant play his cover. I wouldn't count on that, if I were her."

Trudy tapped her bright coral nails against the dull green of the van wall. "Yeah."

§§§

How long ago had she and Gina stood in the hallway of the OCB, complaining to one another—

"Doesn't he _ever_ get out of that damn black suit?"

And turned around to find their boss more than in earshot. Not that he did more than look at them and walk past.

Now he paused on the stoop of Jordan's house, with its stone walls glowing in the sun, pale rose and gleaming beach-sand-white. He wore khakis—short-sleeved shirt, sleeveless camouflage jacket, olive-drab trousers. In those, his dark eyes darting back and forth, surveying the territory, he somehow lost all resemblance to the policeman Trudy knew.

Add to that the observation that the khakis were not new, had the patina and shape of well-used comfortable clothes.

Thailand?

Vietnam would have been too long ago.

What else didn't they know about their boss?

Jordan hustled out of the house dressed much the Same—except that today her trousers were black cotton and her shirt white linen. She paused to lock the door.

As she walked up beside Castillo, he took her arm. Trudy recalled it as a casual act, something that seemed so natural, she could have believed it happened all the time. Except for the minor fact that the Lieutenant never touched anyone.

It made the few hours worth of tape collected so far suddenly real—Martin Castillo sounding old-world deadly Latino as he spoke to both the men and to his supposed mistress.

§§§

Gina rubbed the back of her neck. Into the mike, she said, "Haven't seen anybody else yet—" Over the warehouse wire, Jordan s voice echoed. "Is that going to be the last interruption? LaRoux, don't you know what a bloody watch is?"

A voice with a strong French accent answered. "I had a minor problem with my transportation."

"Terrific. This isn't a squad, it's the amateur hour." Her voice snapped, whiplike. "If you're going to get your car repossessed, do it on your own time, eh?"

"It seems to me you're assuming a bit more authority than originally in your contract," the man she called LaRoux said, with what sounded like deceptive mildness

Castillo answered. "Your employer hired the lady as a tactician. For her plans to work she has to rely on your accuracy. You make mistakes, don't blame her for failure."

He started to answer, but Fox cut him off.

"LaRoux. I don't like failure. Or accidents." The careful English suddenly acquired a lethal overtone. "I never indulge in accidents."

Silence a moment.

"All right, gents," and Jordan sounded quite British, "we'll try it one more time, shall we?"

Another voice, sounding Cuban, interrupted. "Perdóname. How exactly did you say we were going to halt this truck?"

Gina muttered, "She hasn't yet."

A pause. Jordan, still calm, said, "I was leaving the easy bit for last. We provide a distraction."

"Such as?"

"A woman, in shorts, bending over an obviously disabled car."

Salacious laughter filled the air.

"Oh, no," said Trudy.

Gina added, "Oh, _shit_."

LaRoux, obviously approving, asked, "You, madame?"

"You were expecting maybe Vanna White?" It was that darkly sardonic tone Jordan used to answer what she considered stupid questions

More laughter.

"And you, Senor Santoyo?" The French accent sounded peculiar coupled with Spanish. "You approve this tactic?"

Martin sounded normally grim. "Esa señora is the tactician. If she says it will work, it will work.

"I wish," Trudy muttered, "I were a fly sitting on that wall."

Jordan again. "Stopping the truck at this point—" a pause, "means probably no police patrols. They come by rarely, in that area. Therefore, _no need for violence_. These drivers don't tend to carry guns. There will be no more than two men in the cab. Two unarmed men will not argue with an armed squad."

Murmurs.

Fox broke into the rumbling. "Accepted, No unnecessary killing."

Trudy shook her head. Her gold-and-crystal earrings jingled. "And what does _he_ call unnecessary killing?"

"If I might continue?" Jordan sighed. "I have a confirmed route for April the fifth: leaving Fort Pierce at five p.m., down A1, taking west back roads around the city to a port south of Miami. Allowing for speed restrictions—and drivers' tendency to an hour and a half dinner, I expect them to make target at approximately nine-ten. The diversion halts the truck, the driver steps out, and the target is taken. Shouldn't require more than ten men."

Fox interrupted. "Are you sure on that?"

"I've good data, Fox. There won't be more than two men on that truck. Unless you have some reason for wanting a large backup, I can't see any reason for extras. In fact, probably the seven of us are enough, considering transport.

A pause. Then Fox said, "Not killing the drivers means we need to keep them from alerting anyone."

"Of course. Simplest method at this point is to disable the truck by removing distributor cap and battery. Then disable the radio, equally easy, and there you are."

§§§

"The worst problem," Jordan said, "is to get these boys to keep the bullets in their guns." She shoved her coffee cup back. Cream-diluted muddy liquid slopped over its sides onto the battered tabletop. "I expect ten or twelve bodies to execute the op. We can't expect professionals, though one can always hope."

"What's the difference?" Switek brought her a couple of paper towels to mop up the mess.

"Amateurs shoot first and ask questions afterward." Jordan rubbed her eyes, smudging her mascara. "Professionals don't waste expensive bullets."

§§§

Trudy heard Jordan saying, "Any further questions?" and shook her head surreptitiously, wondering if Gina had noticed her abstraction.

If her partner had, Gina kindly didn't mention it. She spoke into her microphone. "Sonny, Rico, that's it. They're coming out."

Rico answered. "Good. I'm beginning to feel like a part of this tree."

"Beginning to look like it, too," cut in Sonny. "Ladies, be prepared to pick us up, all right?"

"Ready and waiting." Gina glanced over at her partner.

Trudy nodded. "I'll keep the tape running."

Little or nothing came across as Martin Castillo's black sedan started and pulled out onto the main road.

Sonny climbed into the driver's seat, as Rico squeezed between the two seats into the back.

"How'd it go?"

"Just the way she told us it would, Rico." Gina scooted over to give him a place to sit.

The van lurched forward.

"The shift on this damn thing is a piece of junk," Sonny growled.

The mike broke in.

"I don't remember your presence being a part of the plan," said Martin Castillo. Matter-of-fact, calm, casual "I think," Rico said, as he changed from climbing boots to shoes, "the lady might just be in trouble. What happened?"

Gina muttered in his ear. The wire continued, clear and betraying.

"I must have forgotten to mention it." Jordan might have had a little quaver in her voice; she cleared her throat.

Silence. Then he said one word—her first name.

"I figured if I brought it up earlier, you'd have shot me down."

"I still might," he said in a harsh bass rumble.

Rico raised his eyebrows. "The boss is pissed."

Silence. Jordan sounded as if she were trying to placate him. "You really shouldn't be in there without some kind of backup."

"I need backup I can trust.... To tell me the whole truth and not what's convenient."

Sonny's voice came back. "Pissed, hell, he's boiling."

"I'm sorry." There was the ring of sincerity in her voice.

"You're in," the Lieutenant said. "Don't ever pull that on me again."

With actual meekness, Jordan Connelly replied, "No, sir." The wire caught the sound of her shift ing, and then she swore. "I forgot—can I take this wire off now?"

A long pause.

"I'd give my next paycheck to know what he's thinking," said Rico.

Trudy pulled the phones off and rubbed her ear. "Probably that whoever's listening better take the warning too."

Martin Castillo said, "Yes."

A little later, the wire went dead.

 

Since the dressing-down, and removing the wire from under her arm, Jordan had tucked one foot under her and sat quietly, staring out of the window at the blue-black sky and the flame-red horizontal lights of the city in the distance. Martin considered the quiet and decided it was too much to hope that she might be thinking over the folly of her ways.

In the rear-View mirror, the yellow lowbeams of the Chevy Van behind them wobbled slightly.

"Lousy road," Jordan said suddenly.

He glanced sidelong at her. She still had her eyes fixed on the road. "Yes," he said again, and noticed that her shoulders twitched, like a cat stroked the wrong way. Something still bothering her. He had a sudden irritable feeling that he would never get into her head, never quite know what she was planning.

How many people could he say he couldn't read?

He turned onto Red Hill Road, towards her road. In the back of his head, he could still hear her saying, "I chose it because there wasn't any cover." And not many people either—one of the older Coconut Grove estates, built in the forties, out of fashion, out of date.

Like Jordan herself? Expensive clothes, classic or exotic, worn with the air that what other people thought of them was completely unimportant.

At the moment, all her languid airs had vanished. Leaning forward in the car seat, she radiated nervous energy. It made the hairs on his arms prickle and the back of his neck itch. He could still feel the impression of her body against his, as she stood in front of the crowd, while explaining her plan. Perfect cover.

And cover was all she made of it, as well. Outside, where pretense could be bypassed, she stayed as professional as he did: no suggestions, aside from that one kiss in the dark, no seduction attempts. He suspected that sex could have been arranged, if he had desired it, on the same businesslike terms.

Except that he had no interest in businesslike terms.

He thought her reactions to him hinted at more than what the cover required. Was she attracted to him?

Worse—how strongly attracted was he to her?

The outer edges of the estate—rare and expensive that it could have almost almost an acre of land—disappeared in jungle, with the heavy sweet scent of tropical flowers. Further up, the stone wall cut off the cover, and from that point, as proved earlier, there had been no hiding place.

He found a rather satisfying symmetry in that.

The outside lights showed over the stone wall surrounding the house. In the headlights, the faint pattern of natural pinks and greys in the wall disappeared.

Her hands shook as she unlocked the house.

Just energy? More nerves?

In the diffused lighting of the vestibule, she stooped to pull off the low boots. "D'you want some tea?"

"Fine."

"Green or Indian?" She tossed the question over her shoulder, already halfway to the kitchen.

"Green."

"Fine," she echoed him, and vanished.

Martin flipped on the living room lights. He monitored her presence by the sound of water and kettle. Briefly she returned, heading for the stairs at a brisk walk.

"I'm going to get out of these," she said to the air, and sprinted up the curving steps. He wandered the living room, with the odd feeling that her restlessness might be contagious. The photo album no longer covered the coffee table. In its place lay a battered book. He sat on overstuffed sectional and picked up the book. The leather binding slipped comfortably between his palms, with the fine smooth patina of old volumes. In his hand, it fell open to a page near the back.

Dylan Thomas

Though lovers be lost, love shall not  
And death shall have no dominion

He flipped to the front flyleaf In a well-shaped careful hand, the name Jordan Lang could still be read, though the black ink had faded to blue. Below it, the date December 17, 1970, could also still be read.

Eighteen years old and reading Dylan Thomas. Suddenly, for one brief instant, he caught a glimpse of her, as romantic now as then. Now she hid the desire for it.

Her bare feet slapped against the marble, and he glanced up. As she came down the stairs, she brushed her hair. The royal under the brilliant blue of the kimono deepened silk-shaded lights. The embroidery, the delicate threading reminded him of other countries.

"I see you found Mr. Thomas," she said.

"Yes." He started to put the book down.

"Don't feel you have to on my account. I don't mind sharing my books."

"It's old, isn't it?"

"English," she said. Printed before the Second World War. I found it one Christmas holiday in an Ann Arbor used bookstore. It felt nice—and I liked Dylan Thomas."

"Do you still?"

Her voice floated out from the kitchen pitched to carry. "Yes—he can be depressing sometimes, and sometimes, l get this—this fury from him. He loved and hated life so much—" Her voice trailed away in the screaming of the kettle, and she didn't pick up the comment.

When she came out from the other room, she carried the large silver tea tray as usual, with the Japanese tea set and a package of shortbread. As she set it down, the cups clattered a little. Her hands were shaking again. He lifted his eyes to her face, where the skillfully applied makeup masked her expression.

"Oh, don't look at me like that!" she said impatiently. She poured two cups of tea, and turned away from him with hers. In fact, she moved as far from him as possible in the living room, to the French doors leading out onto the patio. She drew back the linen draperies and looked out at the globes illuminating the garden.

"What's wrong?"

"I told you. I have nerves."

And she had still put herself into the final stage of the operation?

As if reading his thoughts, Jordan added, "And if you bring up this afternoon, I may very well _hit_ you." With what seemed like magnificent illogic, she said, "It's all your fault anyway. I wouldn't be nearly so nervous if you weren't involved in this setup."

"How does that follow?"

She drank her tea, crossed back to set it on the tray, then returned to her contemplation of the sunken garden. "I wouldn't have to worry about you getting injured."

Of all the— Castillo pointed out, as reasonably as possible in spite of his exasperation, that she might leave his chances of injury to his worry. "It has nothing to do with you, anyway. This is part of my business." Vulnerability would truly complicate matters.

"It does have to do with me." She had wrapped her silk-clad arms around her waist.

"Why?"

She muttered something.

"Jordan—"

"If I had been there, he wouldn't have died."

Connelly? Martin stepped close: still not certain what was in her head. Exploring a theory, he said, "You couldn't have stopped it."

"I could have. I thought it was just another one of his hallucinations. If I'd been with him, Choucheaux couldn't have taken both of us— I can't handle anybody else's death on my hands," she said. Her hands went to her sides; she clenched them, and he heard her teeth grit in the silence.

"It's not your responsibility."

"It is! I should have been there, I _should have_ —" On the last word, Jordan abruptly aimed a fist at the nearest panel of glass.

He still could move faster than she could. Catching her hand at the wrist, he spun her, pulling her away from the temptation.

"Can't you see?" She sounded almost reasonable. "I can't afford to have your death on my conscience too."

"You mean you can't afford to be angry at me for dying," he said softly.

He saw her eyes change color, going gold.

"That's it," he said. "You can't forgive him, can you?"

"I don't know what you—"

Inexorably—get it all out, distract her, get her to an emotionally stable state—he went on. "He went away. He left you and you can't forgive him—or yourself for hating him—" I The sound exploding from her was not a word, not even a shriek, more simply the tearing roar of an animal. Her free hand went for his eyes.

He caught it as well.

As if she'd forgotten how to struggle, her wrists writhed in his grasp. Her face contorted, fighting off tears and pain. Then she simply collapsed against him. "He made me promise."

Martin had to strain to catch the words.

"He let Africa kill him," she muttered. He let it happen—and made me promise not to follow—" Bringing both fists up in his grasp, she pressed them against his chest. "And I'm crippled, and out of practice, and slow, and I'm going to get us both killed, but l can't let you walk into that alone!"

What would get them killed, if anything, was an attack of panic. Panic like this. Panic like this— He remembered his earlier thought of distracting her. Looking down at her, Martin took a long breath, then bent his head and kissed her.

It stopped her.

Briefly.

Then her wrists twisted off, breaking free, and she jerked away from him. with her hands on her hips, breathing harder than normal, Jordan Connelly said, "Don't do that unless you mean it."

This time he took her by the shoulders. This time he left all thoughts of comforting her out of the question. He probed her mouth with his tongue, testing the softness of her tongue, of the inside of her lips, then sliding along her teeth.

She put her hands his, and he slid his along her arms, then silk catching on the on top of palms down back up, the roughness of his skin. The silk itself was so fine he could trace the shape of her nipples. No underwear intruded. The skin of her throat felt as fine and smooth against his mouth. Beneath his thumbs, her nipples tightened as he caressed her.

Jordan's breath caught; she murmured something, deep and almost wordless.

Her fingers bit into the muscles of his arms. At the same time, a warning went off in his head. Either he stopped now, or he wouldn't stop. And she seemed so fragile—too damn fragile—And so he dropped his hands, stepped back from her.

She ran her tongue across her lower lip, where the mark of his teeth could just be seen. She blinked, her expression as stunned as if he'd struck her.

"I did," he told her. The roughness of his own voice, his own breathing, startled him. The muscles in his thighs tightened, as well, the ache bringing him as close to the edge of lost control as he'd slid in years. His lungs burned. It would be so easy....

Then, prudently, he turned to get the hell out of there.

As he reached the door, Jordan said his name. Her voice had an odd note, somewhat tense, somewhat brittle. He paused.

In the same thin-ice tone, she said, "You never asked if I did."

If she had meant it when she kissed him? Martin swung around, studying her. His earlier questions reared up again, and this time he dismissed them. He had her pegged, he knew he had her type. Sex and meaning were opposites in her life. He saw it in her walk, in her attitudes, even in the things she did and didn't say.

Although .... "Did you?"

Jordan crossed the intervening distance, not quickly, but with the intense careful precision of a cat wanting to be sure where her feet touched. Stopping within arms'-reach, just exactly within reach, she tilted her head back a bit. Her eyes almost looked—mocking.

"l don't know," she said. "l'd rather like to find out."

He froze, blankly reassessing the tone and the words. Not fragile. Teasing, maybe; definitely challenging. Once again unexpected. All the danger signs showed. His throat tightened again, as did his legs—and for that matter—

The dark fabric heaved with her breaths. Even tightly belted, it showed her pale skin, the swell of her breasts. Martin touched the long hair falling over her right shoulder, running his hand through the fine light stuff. A shudder rippled through her. He let his fingers drift to her shoulder, trail around to the nape of her neck, and slid the hand inside the kimono, tracing her spine as far as he could reach. Flattening the hand, he pulled her closer.

With the tattered edges of his control still in place, he kissed her, lightly, avoiding deeper contact. When she moved closer to him, urging him to further intimacy, he drew back, changing his touch to something soothing.

He heard her hiss. Her nails dug into his back, suddenly, sharply. Then—she bit him.

Sharp pointed canines sent one brief flash of pain through his lower lip. Jordan jerked her head away as she stepped away, out of his embrace.

Almost.

As he yanked her to him, he felt the cloth slip from her shoulders. Deliberately, he bent his head and took the skin there between his teeth. Jordan gasped; her body tensed. She made some further sound, and he moved to suppress it, shoving her backwards. She nearly stumbled down the steps into the living room. He caught her, by hip and shoulder. In the next breath, he swung her around.

Her back contacted the plaster wall; her shoulder and the back of his hand hit the lightswitch. The inside lights flicked off, and she exhaled explosively.

The plaster certainly must have been ten to twenty degrees cooler than either of them. The analytical thought made him smile, sardonically, as he found her mouth in the darkness.

Jordan arched away from the wall. He goaded her lightly with his nails, sliding one hand along her spine, along the silk. This time she said his name, in a whisper like paper tearing.

He used the other hand to find her belt, fumbling with the knot. Her hands moved, as if to help. He blocked the one with his arm, and pushed the other aside. The knot resisted, and he twisted it in a way he'd learned a long time ago. The silk slipped free.

Beneath the ample material, she indeed wore nothing at all. He brushed the material out of his way, exploring her with his hands.

He heard her now, the breaths erratic and harsh, as harsh as his own. Pale golden slits from the garden fixtures sparkled across the living room floor, creeping to his feet in a pallid wash of illuminations.

They traded kisses, hasty lip-to-lip promises while her fingers fought with his tie. Her hands shook. He felt them slip, and she swore softly.

An abrupt laugh—his—fell between them, and he leaned back just enough to give her purchase. The shift thrust his hips against hers, and she inhaled sharply before attacking his tie and the buttons on his shirt. This time both surrendered.

Then her fingers dragged at his belt, and he flinched: the curved manicured nails scraped across the sensitive skin at his navel. His breath exploded. He heard that catch in her breath again, and thought he must have marked her again.

More deliberately, Jordan repeated the gesture, the nails agonizingly just in contact. They slid inside the band, teasing him, while her free hand removed the belt.

Once a young Cuban shared sensations like this, risking his sensei's wrath and discipline for illicit pleasures in the twilight corridor of a ryu, halfway between night and dawn .... Sometimes he almost remembered that young man, almost remembered the emotion and the piercing abrupt intensity of life.

The fastening on his slacks sounded like a shriek, so much greater a barrier than her kimono. Both of her hands touched his skin, eased down his flanks, and across.

The flame surged and spilled over. He lost himself.

In the strange half-light, he held her against the wall, with the smooth plaster occasional icy shocks against his knees. He heard her teeth grit. The muscles in her thighs rippled in his grasp.

Once, she pressed her face against his shoulder, muffling something like a cry in his linen coat. He pulled her head back up, tangling his fingers in her hair as he took her mouth. He let his lips leave trails along her throat; his tongue probed the hollow between throat and breastbone.

Jordan rolled her head from side to side, fighting his grip on her hair. Her hips thrust against him; her body shuddered under his questing fingers. Her hands shifted constantly, the fingers sometimes questing, sometimes demanding, the response punctuated by a litany of sobbing shaking breaths, wordless fierce sounds.

Then, in the satisfaction, he leaned against her, giving her support as much as holding her to him. He heard her gulping in air, her body limp and satiated. Sweat trickled down his back; his shirt stuck unpleasantly.

As quick and violent as a night in Saigon. Like any soldier taking a whore in some neon-lit doorway. Abrupt fury at himself swept over his body. Stunned amazement, at his vanished control, succeeded the anger.

Jordan's breath felt warm against his throat, making him aware of how frigid the plaster was. His legs quivered when he put full weight on them.

When he shifted, so did she. Her arms released him.

In the inadequate light, he touched her mouth, and then her shoulder. "I hurt you," he said, surprised to hear himself speak.

He barely saw her headshake.

"No," and the word shook a little She amended it with, "Not much."

Out of practice, he told himself bleakly. Not good for anything but losing myself—- Martin started to draw back from her.

"Is this a hit and run?" Her laugh broke his reverie.

His fingers tightened on her hips. Her muscles tautened in answer. She had met him, fury for fury—passion for passion.

Carefully, he drew the kimono up over her shoulders, before arranging his own clothing. He urged her towards the stairs.

On the lowest step, she hesitated and turned to face him. The light failed here. Though he couldn't read her expression, he saw her hold out her right hand.

The manicured nails, the groomed lotioned skin deceived most people, he suspected. Under the polish and perfume, her palm was corded from work, the fingers hard and strong. After a second, he shifted, trading hands, taking the left even when she tried to draw it away.

Then she sighed. The left hand, the scars not nearly so bad to touch as to sight, relaxed in his.

They went upstairs together.

 

Layers of sound sleep parted. Jordan dragged herself up out of oblivion, in answer to a call. She had heard nothing— Someone wanted her awake.

The first faint rose streaks of dawn cut across her blurred sight. She inhaled, blinked, and ran a hand across her head to shove her hair out of the way.

Such a strange surrealistic dream She'd had—

Shifting in the warm cotton sheets, the weave caught a scratch on her back. Such a strange surrealistic reality—

Martin Castillo, completely and properly dressed, stood by the bed watching her. She thought he relaxed, as she focussed on him.

Jordan stretched, testing the limits of soreness. She'd been as clumsy as—as a virgin—and she didn't even care.

What did he think?

He smiled at her—a definite enigmatic smile—and nodded.

And he was gone.

Alice Through the Looking Glass had nothing on it.

Stiff, feeling as if She'd been consumed and fireborn, she forced herself out of bed and into the shower. Warm water pounded the tightness out of her joints, soothed some of the exhausted aching.

As she towelled herself in front of the mirror, Jordan hesitated, then leaned forward to wipe fog from the glass.

The fluorescence threw pitiless glare over bruises, over her slightly swollen mouth. She turned away from it. It had bee catharsis—no one had fueled that in her since Alan—and he had responded to it.

God, what had he thought of her afterwards? Kinky? Sick?

She certainly was not going to wear a halter with the shorts. In fact, a windbreaker might not be out of order.

What the hell had he meant by that smile?


	11. Chapter 11

April 5, 1986

The road was unlit and unfamiliar. Stan Switek leaned forward, peering at the terrain. The semi jounced at a patch in the road.

"Ouch!" said the man beside him.

Switek jumped. "Larry, what was that for?"

"I bit my tongue." Zito sounded aggrieved. He chomped loudly on his chewing gum to show just how aggrieved he was.

Stanley Switek exhaled through his nose. "I shouldn't let it bother me," he muttered. He glanced down at the glowing numbers on his watch dial.

"What?" said his partner.

"I said—" raising his voice, "that when you're nervous you chew gum and I understand you're nervous and I shouldn't let it bother me, but if I hear that gum pop one more time I'm going to shove it down your throat!"

Larry swallowed the gum. After a second, he said, "You don't have to yell."

"I'm nervous. When I'm nervous I yell." `

"And I should understand you're nervous. Sorry, Stan."

"So'm I, Lare." Switek rubbed his moist palm through his hair. The Lieutenant had offered to send Sonny and Rico on this part of the gig. No, he and Larry had taken it. Wanting to prove they were just as tough as the department hotshots.

"Damn."

"What?"

"I wish those two weren't so damn spectacular about everything."

Larry unwrapped a fresh stick of Wrigley's and began to masticate it slowly and almost noiselessly. "I know what you mean."

Swinging the wheel to get the big trailer around a bend, Switek caught a glimpse of white in the headlights. In the next few seconds it evolved into a pair of very nice legs encased in nothing more than khaki safari shorts and low running shoes. Jordan Connelly. Suddenly the night seemed extremely black, and the bend in the Everglades road very isolated.

"Ready, Lare?"

"Any time you are," answered his other half.

§§§

Sonny caught a glimpse of lights on the road. From the plug in his ear, the sound of Bruce Springsteen's gravel voice made the knots in his gut tighten.

'She's going down, down, down—she's going down, down .... '

He shifted his department-issue gun to a better balance.

§§§

Jordan blinked, dazzled by the truck's headlights. She inhaled, slowly, centering for the last time, and straightened to wave. The big vehicle slowed, juddering and rattling as it halted. The driver's door opened, and Stan Switek, looking even bigger in the dark, climbed down from the cab. He stumped over, with his good-ol'-boy accent even broader than usual.

"You got a problem, miss? Can I help?"

"Oh," and she put just a little accent into it, eager and young and innocent. "I hope so. It just won't start."

"Lemme take a look." He came massively up beside her and stuck his head under the hood.

The twenty-two slipped easily out of her windbreaker pocket. Jordan rested the barrel under his ear, keeping her finger off the trigger, knowing that her would-be accomplices could not see it. "Now," she said to him, "just continue to be nice and helpful. On your face, luv, over there in the ditch."

Switek, in character, sounded baffled. "Are you crazy?"

She kicked him in the ankle. "If I get nervous, this'll go off. You particularly interested in scrambled brains?"

Obediently, he stumbled over and lay down.

The passenger door squeaked behind her. She glanced over one shoulder and saw a Cuban man in black silhouetted briefly in the truck headlights. In the next minute, he blended into the dark, leaving Larry Zito standing alone beside the engine.

Martin spoke. "On the ground. Beside your friend."

A van drew up behind the trailer. Ciro Alvarez climbed out of the open doors. He carried a set of boltcutters. As she crouched in supposed guard over the two 'drivers', Jordan heard the bolts snap. The load doors also squeaked.

She glanced towards the trailer. Five men crowded around the trailer—no, four—LaRoux, the two Alvarezes, and Fox. Where was Sanger? Inside the trailer? Martin stood between her and the cluster of mercenaries.

Jordan fumbled just slightly under the car, till the guns came to hand. "Here," she whispered, tossing Switek and Zito each an automatic. "Roll off towards the trees as soon as you hear the signal."

No response. Not that she expected one.

§§§

Springsteen again. That was the cue. Sonny hit the spotlight switch. "Freeze! Miami Vice!"

Things went to hell very quickly.

§§§

Martin Castillo hit the dirt and rolled away from his former position. Lights crossed and recrossed above him.

In the next second, smoke exploded from the back of the trailer Smoke grenades? Jordan hadn't said a damn thing about smoke grenades .... Then he remembered that Fox was Japanese. And had been a mercenary for longer than Jordan Connelly had been alive. Flat on the ground, he raised his head and inventoried the area. Nothing by the Ford. Jordan possibly cowed enough for once to obey orders?

Don't count on it. He scowled, realizing that undercover of the smoke, every one of the five men had disappeared. He lay still, scanning the dark road. Jungle and swamp around them—five men loose there could do a hell of a lot of damage, to say nothing of his officers shooting the wrong person in the dark. He took a breath and a silent prayer to Michael the Archangel to keep anyone from nervous fingers.

His people scrambled through the woods around him. After a minute, Castillo went from flat to all fours, then to a crouched run, paralleling the truck.

"Hold it—" A whispered order.

"Lieutenant Castillo," he said, identifying himself. A chopper with floodlights had been conscripted for this bust—so where was it?

"Ah, shit. I mean, sorry, sir," and the voice and body faded away.

Castillo kept moving. Too damn dark. This whole thing could go down wrong with no trouble at all.

§§§

"Rico. You there?"

"Yeah," his partner said, so close Sonny jumped.

"That chopper on its way?"

A pause. "Gina says yeah."

"What held 'em up?"

"Wrong sector."

"Terrific."

§§§

Jordan squinted against moonlight and the beams searching the darkness. Briefly, not three yards from her, a light silhouetted a man's form. A gun—two guns—fired. A bullet ricocheted off something, maybe a tree trunk. After a few more seconds, she heard the sound of feet trying to be very very quiet. Gauging time and distance, she sprang.

She hit him about hip-high, and he landed flat in the dirt. Hip-high— Jordan reached out with one hand, found his chin.

He bit her.

She kneed him in the balls.

His mouth opened to scream, and she grabbed him by the hair, slamming his head against the ground effectively but sloppily.

He went limp.

With the penlight in her breastpocket, she checked him over quickly. Oh, shit. One of the _good_ guys.

Another gun went off and she spread out, imitating a leaf. Someone blundered into her, and fell over her. Stanley Switek's voice swore in an inventive whisper.

"Switek," she muttered.

"That you, Connelly?" he said.

"Is there another red-haired woman on this job?"

"Not with your tongue."

"Thanks. Would you mind? My mother didn't raise me to be a pancake."

"Sorry." He crawled off her and she heard him getting to his feet. "This is great," he muttered. "The Keystone Kops with bullets, no less."

A bullet screeched over her head. Switek hit the dirt again.

She dropped the penlight and scooted further into the trees.

Something was wrong with her hearing. Her ears were ringing.

No.

It was a chopper. With floodlights, turning the forest night into brilliant surrealistic greyed-out day.

§§§

"Well, thank _you_ ," muttered Crockett. "I just love it when my dates show up on time."

A man in fatigues backed towards him. Sonny stood up.

Joe Smith stepped back, and back, and all Sonny did was to reach out, slap an arm around the guy's throat, and put the barrel of his gun to the man's temple.

"Happy Birthday, pal. Ready for cake and ice cream?"

The man went limp, all at once, before Crockett expected it. Completely thrown off-balance, Sonny Crockett slipped in the damp Florida ground. The slender man twisted and one elbow slammed hard into Sonny's ribs. In the next minute, positions changed, Sonny felt a gunbarrel against his temple and a knee in the small of his back. An insinuating Spanish-accented voice said, "You want to play rough, cop?"

Oh, _hell_ , this was it, wasn't it?

§§§

Gina and Trudy crouched in the brush, edging along towards the road. If things went as planned, they should be in position to collect prisoners when delivered by the remainder of the force.

If only it weren't so damned hard to tell who was who.

Shooting in the dark could be dangerous—

"Gina!" hissed the darker woman. "Behind you!"

And the gun glinted in the grey artificial twilight.

§§§

A forty-five, maybe, a nine mm, hard to tell. He catfooted across the intervening distance, weighing the chances of a bullet fired. In the vague and treacherous light, a shot might hit someone other than intended.

The joint of his right thumb, backed by his left hand, fit neatly under the gunman's trachea. After that, he simply tucked in his elbow and lifted.

A few gurgles and frantic clutches answered him. Then the man collapsed, and Martin Castillo lowered him quietly to the ground, looking over the unconscious form at Trudy and Gina.

"You have handcuffs?"

§§§

If she shot, would the man's finger jerk? Jordan lowered the automatic stiffly, afraid for a second that she just might drop it Most of the men were using forty-fives, and the one she had scrounged from her victim was no exception. Pain chewed on her left hand, where the muscles took the strain of the heavy weapon. Do something, damnit. The man pinning Crockett was one of the bookends—she knew little or nothing about the bookends' personalities except for their aggressive machismo. But this Alvarez was running a hand along Sonny's spine, and she heard the Cuban voice say softly, "You in a rush for it, chico?"

"Ciro!" she whispered, making it sharp and authoritative, praying for a miracle—or at least a shortage of bad luck.

The slim figure twisted over Crockett's back, still bracing the policeman into the mud. A smile actually interrupted Ciro Alvarez's wicked pretty face. "Señora Connelly. You want to play also?"

"Cierto," she said—and kicked him in the chin.

He flew backwards, and Crockett rolled away, over and over, coming up with his eyes wide and just visible in the gray edges of the chopper's floodlights, drifting down through the heavy underbrush. He got to his knees, staring down at the unconscious man. Then, looking up at her, he smiled. "I owe you one, Connelly."

"On the house," she answered. "Where the hell is everybody?"

§§§

"Lieutenant," a voice hissed. "We can't find the little African or the Japanese."

Castillo did not swear, but he scowled. "Sweep the area. Keep looking until you do find 'em." Fox would be more than a mere fanatic if he were trying to do anything now but escape.

He had LaRoux. Four to go.

§§§

Crockett tapped an earplug, lifting his lapel, and spoke into it softly. After a second, he said, "LaRoux's bagged. Who's this clown?"

"Half of the double act."

"What?"

"Sorry. One of the Alvarezes. This one's Ciro."

"Great," He rolled Ciro onto his stomach and neatly applied handcuffs.

She shifted the automatic restlessly. This was taking too long. Sonny scuffed against the grass.

No, wait—!

"Hit the dirt!" his voice cracked.

Reflexive response. Roll, come up—

A shotgun looked almost cavernous when a person stared down the barrel. No time. No time.

And then Rico Tubbs lowered the gun and took a long shaky breath. "Damn," he said. "You all right?"

"Fine," Crockett said.

Jordan inhaled. "Once my heart starts beating again."

§§§

Gina crept soundlessly along the grass, looking both ways, listening intently while following her partner.

Something .... She reached ahead and grabbed Trudy's boot.

The black woman grunted.

A black shadow flitted across their sight, not too far from them.

"Police," Trudy said. "Hold it!"

The explosion of a bullet tore the night.

Gina fired.

With a shrill cry of pain, the shadow collapsed.

Trudy started to stand, and a voice behind the two of them said, "If you please."

Fox's voice, foreign and old and alien.

Gina swore in Spanish. From her belt, a sharp male voice ordered "Report in!"

"Ah, yes," said Fox, "Senor Santoyo. Very good—for a police man. Sanger—"

Something not English answered and the short stocky African passed them. He smelt of blood.

Fox's voice, still soft, horribly amused, told them, "I have one fault—I am sentimental about women—" A pop, like a firecracker, echoed overhead, and then all Gina Calabrese saw and smelt was the harsh burning of a smoke grenade.

§§§

Rico's head jerked up. "What the hell was that?"

Another shot, oh, God— Sonny's heart thudded like a trip-hammer.

He started to turn, and his foot slipped. He went down heavily on one side.

"Damnit, Sonny, stay on your feet," hissed his partner. From the radio at Tubb's belt, Castillo's voice said, "Report in."

Rico thumbed the button, and muttered into it. After a few minutes, Gina's Voice, a little more shrill than usual, took over.

Sonny dragged the half-conscious Ciro Alvarez to his feet.

He looked up, and saw the shadow before Rico. Jordan had her back to it.

"Down!" he shouted, dropping the Cuban.

Jordan swung around. Sonny saw her brace herself as she fired. Her face contorted with agony.

Her shot took a sizeable chunk of bark from a tree to the man's right.

The man looked like Ciro Alvarez. Sonny mirrored the second Cuban's move, lifting the gun.

The roar from Rico's shotgun matched his Bren's snap. He missed.

But Rico didn't.

The automatic fell from Jordan's hand, and Sonny saw her massage the left one. She straightened, and carefully tucked the offending member in her windbreaker pocket.

"You okay?" Rico said.

"I'll live," she told him. "In a day or two, I might even enjoy it. Now what?"

Sonny bent down to Ciro again. "Rico, give me a hand with Sleeping Beauty here. Let's get up to the road, Jordan." After that expression, like hell Crockett would let her help. Hell is what he'd get from Marty, all right.

Together Rico and he dragged the unconscious man out of the shelter of trees into the glaring brilliance of the helicopter-lit scene.

§§§

Police milled about in the center, while LaRoux lay propped against the trailer, whose back doors still stood open. Jordan heard a voice, loud, monotonous, counting off, "Ten, eleven, twelve," and another voice over it, saying, "Hurry it up, Lare, the Lieutenant wants this count now, not next week!"

Jordan didn't see it. Him.

Martin leaned into a patrol car, whose flashing lights threw red and blue strobes over the already Daliesque scene. She saw a microphone in his hand.

"Jordan?"

Trudy. She swung around. The detective seemed unfamiliar in blue uniform. But Jordan forced the details out of her mind. Her tongue worked too slowly and too rapidly. "Fox."

"What?"

"Where's Fox?"

Trudy pressed her lips together. "He ran into us. Caught us off-guard. Took—Sanger? the African, anyway—and disappeared—"

"Like Houdini," Gina supplied, coming up behind her partner. "In a puff of smoke."

Zito's voice echoed from the truck. "It's hard to tell, Stan. They really tossed things around here."

She searched the road, trying to figure out what was wrong.

"Where's my car?"

"One of them took off with it," Gina said. "We've got the road patrols on it—Jordan? Jordan, come back!"

They were all too busy, all of them, she had to find someone to listen to her—She cannoned into Sonny Crockett almost knocking him down. She did knock his prisoner over. "Sonny. Sonny, get me to the warehouse."

He looked at her as if she had flipped.

But she knew perfectly well, as well as if she done it herself what had happened. And yet, and yet— What harm can he do? His teeth have been pulled, right? 'When you pull a tiger's teeth, watch out for your wrist—'

My family died at Nagasaki— Japanese. A Japanese man who had taught her karate, Japanese military karate, impressing her with the intricacies of Japanese honor. Detail that a twenty-three-year-old girl, with no real knowledge of death, simply ignored.

"Look, I can't just take off, lady," Sonny started.

"Sonny, _please_ —"

He scowled at her. "Shit," he said finally, and turned to Tubbs "Rico, can you take this guy and tell Marty what's going on?"

"Sure, no problem."

"All right, Jordan, come on—and there better be a good reason for this!"

I think there is, she told him silently. But I hope to God l'm wrong.

The Daytona's wheels screeched when he hit the main highway back to town, doing fifty around a corner. The back fishtailed and settled.

Next to him, Jordan Connelly leaned forward, her fists pressed so hard into her dirt-spattered thighs that white rings bled out like ripples on a pond.

He hit the cut-off, whipped down through the gears, came back up and pushed down on the accelerator.

"Look, what's all this about?" he said.

Her head did not turn. He noticed leaves and twigs in her long braided hair. He and she both stunk of Florida muck.

"Fox is at the warehouse," she said.

"We'll need backup." He got on the phone, but not before he noticed her lips move.

No, they said without sound.

Rico was right. She was strange.

But as gravel sprayed the Ferrari's undercarriage, on the sweep up to the warehouse, he saw the LTD—her rented H—in his headlights.

"Backup," he told Castillo. "Make it quick."

He felt the car shudder in the mud when he hit the brakes, and came within almost a foot of creaming the Ford. Before the car quite stopped, Jordan opened door, and jumped. She landed on her feet, both feet, skidded, and almost into a run.

By the time he got to her, she was at warehouse door.

It was locked. "Can't you shoot it open or something?"

He did not believe she'd said that. He stared at her.

She brought her fists down. "Dammit, Sonny!"

His sometimes-pleasant face turned sour. He nodded. "Okay, Stand back."

He aimed, turned his head aside, and fired. Wood shattered. A splinter gouged his cheek. He set his jaw glanced back.

Steel showed. That was one hell of a deaddbolt.

Another shot. This time the bits of missed him. But the door, swinging loosely outward, almost slapped him. Would have, if he hadn't jumped.

Jordan dug that silly little twenty-two out of her windbreaker pocket.

"Hold it," he told her, and stooped to pull the thirty-eight out of his leg holster. "Here, All that pea-shooter is good for is killing flies."

She shrugged and put the Walther away, accepting the gun he handed to her. While she covered, he went down the corridor. Then her turn.

This door, as well, was locked.

Sonny gritted his teeth. "Damn," he muttered. "Might as well be hung for two B&E as one."

This door fell apart when the bullet connected. Sonny threw himself back against the wall and waited. He could taste the bitterness of nerves at the back of his throat, new as well as leftovers from the bout in the forest.

Nothing.

Jordan sneaked a glance. "Clear," she said.

He nodded. "One," he said to her. "Two."

She took a breath.

"Three."

Together, they faced the room, high and low.

Empty.

"Where do these doors go? Do you have any idea?" he said, expecting a negative.

He got no answer.

When he looked at her, Jordan's forehead had wrinkled, and her eyes looked glassy and faraway.

"On the blueprints," she said, in an equally distant voice, "l remember three corridors and a storeroom. Most of the corridors lead to other storerooms. One—" she gestured, as if counting or measuring or something, and then exhaled. "That one." To the right. It leads to a set of offices. I think—I suspect—Fox used them as an apartment."

"Okay, Let's check it out. You stay at my back." `

"Whatever you say, Detective."

This one he checked the lock on. Mickey Mouse time—pulling an old Visa card from his jacket pocket, he jimmied it. As he yanked it open, Jordan covered.

"Clear," she said, in that crisp professional tone.

He sidefooted down the hall, with her on the other wall, both of their heads swinging back and forth in alternating rhythm, checking the way for boobytraps.

The first door was all glass. It had been transformed into a cozy little kitchen.

The second door was solid. Sonny tested it. Unlocked. He motioned, and she put herself flat on the other side. With one foot, he kicked it open. It rebounded once, like the sound of the Last Trump.

Bathroom.

"This damn thing," he muttered, Was a farce from start to finish."

Jordan choked on a laugh.

He glared at her, and she shook her head, strands of hair festooned with old leaves falling into her face.

"Don't get me started," she said. "I have a profound sense of the ridiculous."

"Terrific. A backup who thinks she's Abbot to my Costello."

And then she leaned back against the wall and her shoulders shook. She bit her lip, and he saw tears runnelling down her cheeks while she held in her laughter.

It only lasted thirty seconds or so, by his watch, but it felt like half a day.

"No," she said, "l'm Connelly to your Castillo."

He snorted. He went on down the hall, trying to maintain his firm awareness of the situation, but every now and then, the pun would catch him, and he bit his lip as well.

One door left. Blank wood. Another john? He motioned, and she flattened herself against the wall one more time. This one was also unlocked, and he nudged it, carefully; it swung inward as if it had been recently rehung in balance.

Sonny Crockett was aware of several things: a scent of perfume, faint and sweet and unfamiliar; the metallic odor that blood left in the air and that seemed to cling to his teeth when he inhaled; and a crawling, prickling, horrible sense of ugliness oozing over his body as he looked into the dark narrow eyes of a man not quite dead.

Behind him, Jordan moaned.

A little pulse beat in Crockett's temples, like the tiny hammers on piano strings.

His stomach heaved. He shook his head.

And Fox's eyes, still alive, still aware, watched them both.

He felt the woman slip by him. He thought, maybe, that she started to put a hand out, and then didn't. She did, slowly as if everything were unreal and impossible, slide gracefully to her knees.

The old man smiled.

Sonny went down the corridors faster than he'd gone up them. Outside in the cool clean Florida air, with the pleasant scent of marsh and cut grass wiping the revolting scents from his sinuses, he leaned against the Ferrari and breathed in as deeply as he could.

People do not do that. Men—old men, even a Japanese old man—do not commit hari-kiri in nineteen eighty-six.

But of course he knew what he had seen.

Edging around the car, using it to keep himself aware of reality, he sat down in the driver's seat and reached across for the carphone. He dialed mechanically.

In the distance, he heard a siren wailing.

Took 'em long enough. Not that it mattered now The phone rang. And rang.

After a bit, after some conversation, he got the person he wanted.

"Yes, Sonny," and Martin Castillo sounded so real and so practical that the last remnants of uneasy horror slid away.

"Fox is dead." He took gulp of nice clean air.

"Ho?"

"He's—killed himself."

"Seppuku?"

"What?"

"Hari-kiri?"

Sonny took another breath "If you mean did he slit his gut open, the answer is yes."

Silence. "Where's Jordan?"

"Inside." Sonny heard his voice flatten out. "Payin' her respects."

Silence again. A long one, this time, while the sirens came closer and closer. And in the silence, Sonny wiped his sweaty face and thought that it was, at last, finished. The old man was dead. "Sonny, When backup gets there, have them call the ME and check the place out. There should be files, somewhere, regarding his contacts. Some of those men weren't locals. I want to know how they got in. Have backup go through the warehouse. You take her home."

"You want me to stay with her?"

Martin Castillo sounded strange, low and flat. "If she'll let you."

"Okay, Marty. Don't worry."

And then all the peace of a job completed shattered. Sonny heard her, calling him. "Hold it."

"What is it ? "

"I don't know. I'd better go see."

"Report in when you find out."

"Right." He wondered if his mind were going or something equally insane. "I mean, how far is it to the car from where we were?" Certainly too far to hear her call.

The place felt clammy, as if something—death, maybe—stuck to his skin like cold wet mud. Usually small spaces left him unmoved. He shouted her name and it came out a bit high-pitched, a bit squeaky.

"Sonny! In the main room—hurry!"

Light scalded his eyes. He blinked, and blinked again, and finally when his pupils adjusted, realized the illumination was actually only a soft pale glow.

The next thing he saw was blood.

He trailed it, hastily, curving around the assembled boxes. Some were open—he passed by one filled with flat plastic packages and the words EXPLOSIVE-HANDLE WITH CARE stencilled on its side.

In a back corner, next to the wall, he found her.

He found Sanger, as well.

Jordan Connelly looked up at him, from her sitting position; she cradled the smaller man's head in her arms. The light—or something—bleached her face as white as beach sand under sun.

In a voice that shook for all her control, she said, "There's a bomb."

"What?"

Her words began to rattle out, like bullets, fast and sharp. "He didn't have the plutonium—

But he had a bomb set up from the beginning, in case things went wrong—Sanger told me about it. It's on a timer."

"Where the hell is it?"

She shook her head. "In here, somewhere. He didn't know."

"Was the timer set?"

"Just before Fox went back in there. He took care of Sanger first—"

Sonny glanced wildly around them, noticing for the first time that a pallet had been carefully arranged against the wall. Tracks of blood showed that Sanger had dragged himself off the futon and across the floor. "He just stuck it in somewhere?

A thin voice spoke in some dialect, and Crockett stared down at the dying man's ashen face, listening desperately, as if listening could somehow make comprehension possible.

"In a box," Jordan said. "He had it in a box, and he set it while Sanger watched, and then he carried it over around to the other side of the pile. Sanger heard him set it down."

"How long was the timer set for?"

Through stiff white lips, she said, "Fox said he wouldn't have gajin hands touch his body even dead. And he knew we'd be after him just as soon as we realized he had decamped."

"Christ," Sonny said, and knew it for a prayer. "Not very long." In the musty light, with the sick taste of fear coating the back of his throat, he stood up and looked around them. How many boxes with explosives? A hundred? "This old place will go up like—"

"A bomb," she finished, in a weird shaky voice. "Just like I said."

"What do you mean, like you said?" He heard his voice crack.

"I mean Fox got the plutonium after all!"

Sonny didn't even try to say what was on his mind.

Sanger said something, and Jordan, as if shaken out of her stupor, laid his head down and tackled the boxes;

Sonny joined her, yanking the wooden lids off, shuffling through hastily, and setting them aside. "He wouldn't have taken time to hide it—"

"Here," she interrupted. As carefully as she had handled Sanger's head, Jordan set the wooden carton on the floor, and knelt by it.

Rather inanely, Crockett commented, "That's a nuclear bomb? It doesn't look like so much." It didn't, really, no more than a lead cylinder, one end closed tightly, and the other end sporting a rather common clock timer.

"l'll call Bomb Squad—"

"We've got seven minutes and twenty-five seconds," Jordan said. The timer chuckled. "Twenty-four."

"Don't give me a goddamn countdown!"

From the doorway, someone said, "Officer Crockett!"

"Get out!" Sonny took the time, precious time, to climb over to the uniformed man and apprise him of the situation. He left three useless instructions, knowing they were useless.

"Get the area cleared, call Bomb Squad, and tell Lieutenant Castillo."

The officer started to swing his flashlight back to light a path out, and Sonny added, "And give me that. The light's for shit in here."

To his surprise, Sanger lay against one of the stacks of boxes by Jordan. The African spoke in a breathy mixture of English and dialect, while Jordan checked out the bomb. She looked up at Sonny, with bright spots of color, like fever, high on her cheekbones.

"The plutonium's a secondary, fit in here at the bottom for compression, and the backplate screwed on it. I can get that out or I can go for the timer."

He didn't like bombs. He had never enjoyed any work with Bomb Squad. "What's the problem with the timer?"

"Fox was an expert." She nodded at Sanger. "He tells me Fox spent time on the arrangement. I'm no expert, and God only knows what I might trip if I went for it. How are you at disassembly?"

Crockett shook his head. "Lady, you're running this show."

Another line of dialect from the little man.

Jordan took a breath. "I'm going for the plutonium."

That means that even if you get it out, the damn thing's going to go off. He didn't say it. He offered her the flash, and she said, "Hold it for me."

Obviously she had taken the time while he played Sergeant to the uniforms to locate a toolbox. She took out a Phillips and began to work on screws. Her face still looked like white paper.

"Keep a watch on this for me," she said. "If you see anything like a wire, any color at all, yell."

A wire would mean he booby-trapped the backplate. Sonny felt sweat trickle down his forehead, and wiped it away with his free hand. The flash wobbled.

She stopped. He saw her teeth sink on her lower lip, and then she said, tight and hard, "Do you want to change places?"

"Go on," he said. "I'm fine. Besides, you know about bombs, don't you?"

Jordan concentrated on the screw.

"Don't you?

"I'm a tactician," she said. "Tacticians decide how much of a place you want to decimate, and how to accomplish it. They leave such trivia as building bombs for the op to other experts."

"Do you mean to tell me you don't know what you're doing?"

Sweat stood out on her forehead, and spilled like tears down her face, as she jerked her head around to glare at him. "I don't mean to tell you a damn thing!" Her fingers trembled, and she took them away from the thing

Sanger's whisper-thin voice said "Go on."

She sat back on her heels, then dragged a hand across her forehead. "Can Bomb Detail get here in time?

He looked at the timer. Six minutes, ten seconds. "Go on."

Jordan went back to the screws. "Sanger knows most of the construction. He can tell me what to do.

Sonny risked a glance at the ashen face, the closed eyes. How long would the man last? No fresh blood showed. Jordan looked as sick herself. With an experimental cough, he tried a question. "How did they get the plutonium?"

"When everyone took off—"

"Foutez le camp," said Sanger's breathy voice.

A smile cracked her pale face. Fox leaned in and grabbed a container, then hit the ditch. Sanger went to find me, at Fox's orders—Fox thought I was on the level. Sanger realized I wasn't, and met Fox up the road."

Sonny thought so why is he helping us now, and only belatedly heard himself voicing it.

Sanger almost chuckled, and then gasped, the sound like a thin sigh of pain. "A man must protect his—" some thing in dialect.

"What?"

Jordan said, "Never mind," but some color came up in her face.

"If the gods die," Sanger murmured "who will carry our souls?"

In the same tight voice, she snapped, I am not a god."

The African made some soothing noise.

A glint of red appeared at the edge of the backplate, and Sonny said, "Stop!"

Her hand froze.

"Wire," he said.

A small black hand offered him a pair of thin wirecutters.

Sonny held them out and Jordan shook her head.

"I can't use my left hand for fine work," she said. "I can hold it steady but I haven't any grip You'll have to do it."

"Are you sure it's safe?"

Sanger s voice sounded weaker 'The wires to the backplate we pressure sensitive only. He didn't have time to put in secondaries or other traps.

Leaning over flash in one hand, Sonny slid the cutters in over the wire. He heard the sound of Jordan's breathing, even slow and steady.

He clipped.

And carefully laid back keeping the flash as steady as possible.

Jordan, took one ragged breath then went on to the next screw. The flash jiggled. But she swore and the left hand dived into the box.

The flash hadn't wobbled. The backplate had.

"Sonny, she said, "you re going to have to hold the back plate and the flash. I need both hands."

"If I do that, and you come another wire you'll have to cut it."

A pause. She nodded "Give me the cutters. I'll manage.

He held them out, and she took them—between her teeth The backplate felt warm against his fingers, as warm as the flash. 'What's three miles deep and glows in the dark7'

The timer said four minutes flat.

From his cramped vantage he saw green, neon in the light "Stop!"

She switched hands holding the Phillips in her left palm, with her stiff fingers clamped as tightly as possible. He could smell the sweat on her skin, a little rancid with fear. Her right hand took the cutters, and edged them in on the green. She hesitated.

"I can feel it but I can see it. Have I got it?"

"Yes," he told her.

The green wire parted.

Three minutes, forty seconds. She went to the next screw, and her hand slipped.

Sonny held the plate firm. "Don't rush," he said. "We'Ve got all the time in the world."

After a pause, she laughed, a short hard sound, and answered. "You're absolutely right."

No wire on that screw. Two more to go.

Blue. "Wire."

She got the cutters positioned, and squeezed.

Nothing.

"What's wrong?

"l can't cut it. It's thicker."

"Try again." Three minutes.

She squeezed. The wire sang as it snapped, and she jerked back, jarring him. For a moment, neither one of them breathed.

Then she attacked the last screw, moving with a quick surety that spoke of intense stress.

A small lead cylinder dropped out, and she looked around. "Give me your jacket."

"What?" He stripped it off even as he asked.

"I don't want to handle it." She knotted one sleeve and scooped the cylinder into it. "Get Sanger. Move!"

From the feel of the little man's body, Sanger was past help. Sonny picked up the warm, limp form anyway. Like handling a dead cat.

They stumbled down the dark corridor.

Crockett tried not to think about the timer.

Outside the remnants of the front door, lights cut across the night, blue and red swaths of warning.

"I told them to clear the area," he muttered.

Underfoot, the ground felt rocky, uneven.

The blast knocked him off his feet. He saw his jacket flying past him, as if thrown, and then landed heavily on one side, almost on the thing he carried. He rolled, dropping Sanger, and tried to crawl to his feet, deaf and aching from concussion shock.

The warehouse was a fireball, smoke rising high from the flames He thought of mushroom clouds, of old war films.

Three miles deep and glows in the dark—

Jordan lay supine three feet or so from him, and he reached a hand, slowly, across the intervening distance.

Pulse. Slow, then rapid, but a nice living pulse, and her eyes open, aware.

He could hear the flames crackling in the musty warehouse. Behind his blurry vision was the memory of black eyes and an old man's smile.

"Beat you at the last," he muttered. It didn't sound like his voice.

Sonny passed out

Trudy stood at the end of Sonny Crockett's hospital bed, watching Rico fuss over his partner. She glanced sideways to her own partner, who stood on the other side of the bed. Gina looked pale, and rather hastily scrubbed clean.

Good thing you got a hard head, Crockett," said Rico. "Keep you around until the Mayor pins a medal on you."

Crockett's hazel eyes came up. "For what?"

"For defusing that bomb," Gina's soft voice broke in.

"Me? Who said I did it?"

"You mean you didn't?"

"No. Jordan did it. With the little guy giving her instructions 'til he bled to death. She say I did it?"

From the doorway, Castillo interrupted. "She did. I'll go check on it."

Sonny Crockett leaned back. He looked mournfully at his coworkers. "Doctor's threatening to keep me in here two days. You guys have got to spring me."

Gina started to laugh. "Sonny, you can't go bail for someone in the hospital."

"Bail?" The hazel eyes sparkled evilly. "Who said anything about bail? l'm talking a breakout here, sweetheart. Now if one of you would just bake me a cake with a file in it—"

As he came closer to the hospital room, Martin heard Jordan's voice: the level, deceptively calm tone of trouble.

The doctor looked exasperated. "Mrs. Connelly, you may have a concussion—"

"The policeman I was with. Crockett. Is he all right?"

"He's got a concussion. He's staying the night."

"Good. You said there was nothing on my CAT scan. l'm going home."

"There could be things that didn't show up—"

"l'm going home."

Martin interrupted what looked like a long one-sided conversation. "Doctor, l'm Lieutenant Castillo. Could I speak to Mrs. Connelly a moment, please?"

"All right," the woman said. "But a moment." She hesitated, looking at Jordan as if words hovered, then simply quietly left. `

"l'd like a statement," Martin said.

Jordan's green-gold eyes surveyed him, with some strange unfathomable expression, as if she wasn't certain who he was. "Detective Crockett has made his. Your preliminary comments don't quite match. Maybe you'd like to change something?"

She sighed, and leaned back against the pillow, looking oddly defenseless. "Oh. You mean about defusing the bomb."

"Yes."

"I did it."

"How did you know it was there?"

"Fox told me," she said with her eyes closed. "He thanked me for watching him die—honor, he called it—and in the same breath said that betrayal begat betrayal. I asked what he meant, and he said that he had the plutonium. That I should compose myself for death. And then he was gone. l went to search the main room. Sanger heard me, called to me. He told me about the bomb."

"Why?"

"He was a member of the tribe Alan belonged to. The one I was initiated into when I lived with Alan. He regarded me as a witch—" She grimaced.

La bruja roja, a less businesslike corner of Martin's mind suggested. He slapped it down.

"And I shouted for Sonny, and we—defused the bomb." She opened her eyes and sat upright, looking a little dazed. "Will that do for now?"

"Yes?"

"Good. If you'll excuse me, I want to get dressed." With a somewhat belligerent look, she added, "l'm going home."

Refraining from pointing out her behavior was not too rational, Martin said, "Is there anything else I can do?"

"You can call me a taxi."

An absurd answer rose up. He bit back a smile.

Jordan said, "If you _dare_ —"

This smile, momentarily, escaped.

"l'll drive you home," he said. Paperwork. He should trust one of his people to take her .... He looked at her pale face, at the greying hollows under her eyes. She looked like she ought to stay in the hospital.

Nothing like the woman who'd worked beside him, argued with him, made love with him—This was business, still.

"All right," she said.

"When you're ready," he said. "Let me know."

After a long silent ride, Martin swung the car into her drive. Jordan sat up and blinked. The house blazed with lights. As he put the shift into Park, the front door swung open and Consuela appeared.

"Did you learn to be sneaky at the Police Academy?" Jordan said, and was almost immediately ashamed of the querulous tone.

"The doctor said you needed someone to keep you awake."

And so you found the logical person to dump me on, she thought. He got out of the car, came around, and opened her door while she was still adjusting to the end of the line.

She looked at him, trying to equate this man, this proper reserved policeIan, with the Martin Castillo she thought she had begun to know. It was over. All of it.

"Thank you for your help," he said formally.

Business.

"You're welcome," she said. "Most interesting thing I've done in six months."

Still polite, still the formal policeman, Martin Castillo escorted her to the doorway, where Consuela took her inside.

Words almost got out, but pride held them back. Pride held everything back, until she heard the sound of the motor receding down the road. Then, to her amazement, and Consuela's consternation, Jordan burst into tears.


	12. Chapter 12

April 14, 1986

 _Make up your mind._ Jordan Connelly moodily poked around in the refrigerator, trying to find something she felt like eating. Crouching on the floor, she contemplated the neat foil packages Consuela had left her on Tuesday, trying to decide between fried chicken and a trip to Switzerland.

 _You've been mucking about with a trip to Switzerland for the past week. Make up your mind._

And for the same week, Consuela had berated her like a child who'd fallen down and scraped a knee. Jordan put the package of fried chicken back in the refrigerator. "Not even as if I'd said anything," she muttered. "Not, I suppose, that I bloody well had to."

She pulled out a papaya. "If I'm getting this damn transparent, maybe I _ought_ to go back to Switzerland. Or to London and Bodie. At least the goats don't tell me what I'm thinking."

§§§

"It's one of those—those night things," she said aloud to Consuela.

The Cuban woman looked puzzled. "Perdón?"

"Sometimes at night, in the dark, you—you do something crazy, something—impulsive," Jordan said struggling for a reasonable explanation of her spontaneous remark. "And then, in the light of day, it all dissipates, and you see it was just smoke. Just dreams."

"Dreams come true," Consuela told her, in the same gentle voice she used to her daughters.

"Mine did once." Jordan had paused to tie her running shoes. "Lightning doesn't strike twice."

§§§

"Or," she said to the piece of fruit in her hand, "take George Cowley up on his offer and move to London. It'd be a switch, taking up a legitimate line of work. Like being twenty-one again."

The doorbell startled her, and she almost cracked her head on the freezer door as she stood. Not more salesmen, please.

It wasn't often she found herself speechless. Looking through the peephole, then opening the door, Jordan was—speechless.

Martin Castillo simply stood there, on the marble rectangle of the stoop, waiting patiently.

Sudden intense resentment stabbed up into her breastbone, and she bit it back. What the hell was he doing here? What had she forgotten to sign? I'd accepted it was over, that he wouldn't speak to me again—so what the hell is he doing here?

Politely, formally, he said, "May I come in?"

Right; a good hostess didn't keep people, even people she didn't want to see, standing on the doorstep. With a sense she was managing to be a complete idiot, she took a breath, then said as formally as he had, "Pardon me. I wasn't expecting visitors. Please come in, won't you?"

"Thank you." Correct and polite as usual. He stepped into the vestibule, and it was as if the last month had never happened. A Lieutenant from Miami's Finest stood there, dressed soberly in black suit, white shirt, black tie.

Pain shot upwards again, to her surprise, like a punch low in the gut, cutting off her breath a moment. She remembered a man who worked beside her—a man who made love with her. She didn't know this man at all. I never did. Don't think about it. Keep it like he wants it—business. "What can I do for you?"

Under one arm he carried something wrapped up in black cloth and heavy plastic sheeting. He held it out now, and she took it reflexively. "I brought you this."

It was heavier than it looked. "What is it?"

His eyebrows lifted. "You could unwrap it."

She poked gingerly at it. It smelt of smoke. "I'm not sure I want to." A thought shoved its way into her beleaguered brain. "Is it his shortsword?"

"Yes," Short and flat.

"So that's the unfinished business," she muttered. From the lift of his eyebrows, she realized he had heard her. "Why bring it to me?"

His eyes focussed on the marble flooring. After a minute, Martin Castillo said, in an almost gentle voice, "Did he have any living family?"

"No, I told you, they all died at Nagasaki. His wife and son as well—"

"Any other students?"

"No. He said, before he—died—I was the last."

His eyes lifted. He looked at her in a way that reminded her of Fox about to launch into a philosophy lecture. "In the days when there were samurai," he said, still with that softness, "it was the custom, after the act of seppuku, for the samurai's sword to be taken first to the lord who had given him the command, to prove that the order had been obeyed. Then, the sword would be given to the samurai's surviving family." His voice had an odd quality. The words sounded as if drawn from personal experience and not book knowledge. "I think," he said, "he would want you to have it."

Jordan stared down at the plastic-wrapped sword, remembering Fox's dark eyes lost in some other world, dying.

"Seppuku was not something to be ashamed of," Martin told her. "It was an honorable way to die."

"He told me, too, that betrayal begat betrayal. He was right."

"No."

She looked up.

After a longer pause, the low iron voice said, with obvious difficulty, "There is no honor in killing the innocent. He did the only honorable thing left to him."

"I only wish I knew why." She put an arm protectively over the sheeting. "He was a good man, Martin—when I first knew him, no one was kinder, or more patient—" She sighed and rubbed the long rigid shape of the wakizashi. "I just wish I understood."

"You're a Westerner," he said. "You have to have long exposure and involvement in the East to understand bushido."

As if he knew it. No wonder he felt so alien. She felt that now, in fact, as if he stood apart from her, as if invisible glass walls held her at bay. Like I said, one of those things that falls apart in the light of day. She tried a tentative question. "What about Dutch?"

"He was deported this morning.

They sent him back to South Africa."

"The statement Sonny took—and all that—was it in order?"

"Fine,"

Nothing. He stood there with his hands in his pockets.

"It was a long way for you to come—can I offer you tea?" She attempted to sound cool, controlled, and heard it emerge as brittle His eyes stayed on the marble. "I can't stay. I have to get back to the office. I wanted to bring you that before any more time passed."

"Oh." She managed a smile. "I appreciate it." You are so damn fickle, woman—make up your mind. Feeling abandoned because the man won't look at you. Stupid. She started past to open the door for him.

His head came up, and the dark shrewd gaze froze her. "Are you busy Friday night?"

"No." Her lungs cramped.

Something in the intense face relaxed. "Will you have dinner with me?"

Don't get into it again. Say no. The muscles in her legs knotted. "Yes." At least, thank whoever watched over idiots, her voice didn't quaver.

"Seven?"

"Will you be on time or early?"

He watched her gravely, but she thought she detected amusement in the set of his mouth. "On time, unless I get held at work. If I should, I'll call."

Her smile came up from the deep well of laughter she could still feel at times. "I promise not to sulk if your work takes precedence."

"Good."

 

You can't always get what you want—  
You know you can't always get what you want—  
But if you try sometimes  
you just might get  
what you need—

 

"That's all I need," she said to the radio. "The Stones."

She took a breath and tried the zipper again. This time it went halfway up, and she paused one more time. "I knew there was a reason I quit buying things with long zippers—"

The doorbell made her jump. Incredulous, Jordan swung around to stare at the clock-radio. Six-twenty.

"Oh, he _wouldn't_ ," she said. Grabbing her kimono from the bed, she slipped into it and knotted the belt as she hurried down the stairs, bare-legged. The marble and tile felt pleasantly cool against the soles of her feet.

He looked up at her, in that odd way of his, with his head tilted a little to one side. Jordan felt the exasperation peak. Hands on her hips, she said, "You're early."

His mouth twitched. "I didn't want to ruin my record."

Halted, she looked at him a moment, then laughed. Jordan tried to hang on to the exasperation, but it slipped away. With a shake of her head, she said, "Well, as long as you're early, you can do me up." She slipped off the kimono and turned.

And, as usual, thought better of it too late. Nothing like subtlety, right?

He stepped up behind her. She heard the door shut. "Hold your hair out of the way," he said.

She slipped her hands under the long unruly stuff and lifted it off her neck.

The zipper slid up an inch or two, then stopped.

She almost turned her head, then felt his lips against the nape of her neck. Jordan bit her lip; all the nerves came alive at once, and she shivered.

"Jordan," he said, softly, his breath warm against her skin. "Is this what you want?"

Dropping the hair, she turned to him. He looked suddenly approachable, if still—melancholy. Had the same question she'd struggled with occurred to him?

"What do you want?" she returned.

Martin studied her a moment, then put his hands reflexively in his pockets. "l'd—like you to kiss me again."

The "oh" strangled in her throat.

The expression on his face remained grave and somber; it matched his suit, the colors of mourning in two cultures. He still bore no resemblance to the man she had kissed.

But she carefully placed her hands on his shoulders before bridging the slight gap in height to touch his mouth with hers. He tasted warm, and male—and controlled. Under her palms, under the smooth black jacket and the white cotton shirt, his muscles ridged with tension.

And his hands stayed hidden.

This is wrong, all wrong.... What does he _really want_? Jordan leaned back just enough to study his eyes, and just saw the flicker in his expression, the control shivering for a fraction of a second.

How did he feel that night? He's so controlled—l think he values that control—and there wasn't much of it that night— She swallowed, rejecting most of the banal or obscene comments that came into her head. Words came to her. "Put your hands on me."

The eyes flickered again. The heat of his hands branded her through her silk dress, and this time he stooped to meet her kiss.

Her stomach curled up into a knot. Her fingers burned, and the same feeling of waking circulation tingled down her arms, through her breasts, down her thighs.

She rested her lips against the pulse in his throat, closing her teeth on the skin. Like being drunk. Like being lost in your own body, and she hadn't lost control with anyone in months, long months filled with men she could lay with and leave the next morning....

Then he pulled away, and glanced briefly around them.

No, she told herself, the middle of the vestibule floor isn't likely to be comfortable.... "Let's go upstairs?"

He nodded. Then, while his arms were around her, he zipped her dress.

"You'll only have to undo it again," she said.

His face lit with—something. "I know."

Heat flooded her face. Then they went upstairs.

Martin shut the door behind them, in the way she had noticed most men in dangerous professions did. The more doors, the more safety?

Standing behind her, he brushed her hair out of the way, and pulled the zipper. Halfway down, it stuck. With a sharp, impatient tug, he forced it into compliance. His hands slid inside the dress. Her skin prickled at the touch, his fingers not always gentle as he fumbled with her brassiere. His palms brushed across her nipples, and then he brought the hands up to slip the dress off. It fell to the floor, and she kicked it out of the way.

She heard his breathing catch. His mouth pressed against her neck again, sliding along the skin. He left the mark of his teeth on her shoulder.

"Martin—" Jordan said. _If he wants me to stand here, I will—but I want—_

His hands moved away, so that she could turn, could touch him. Her fingers trembled when she undid his tie. When a button jammed in its opening, Jordan yanked. She left most of the buttons from his shirt on the floor.

He backed towards the bed, drawing her with him, and when his knees touched, he folded down onto the spread, pulling her down. She caught herself, adjusting to his body.

His shoes hit the floor. Piece by piece she tossed his clothing after them.

She heard a laugh slip out of his throat, low and deep. She paused, leaning over him, baring her teeth in pretended threat.

Quickly, easily, he flipped her onto her back, and looked down at her, his lips parted. He shook his head.

Jordan smiled, and arched upwards as fast as he had moved, but he caught her halfway. It was more than enough to make her stop thinking for some time.

 

Feeling pleasantly exhausted, almost sleepy, she raised her head from his chest, and propped her chin on the back of her hand. "I thought we were going to dinner," she said.

"I just ate," he answered.

She stopped dead a moment, and gave silent thanks for a dark room to hide her blush. Then she laughed. "I would never have thought you'd produce that—"

"Are you hungry?" Martin said solemnly.

In the dark, she traced his mouth and found the smile his voice hid.

"Well," she said, "I like dessert—"

His teeth closed on her finger, gently. Then, releasing it, he told her, "So do I."

 

The alarm went off like the crack of doom.

Martin jerked awake. He started to reach for the sound, but the woman next to him rolled over, onto him, and smacked at the clock. She missed. He slid his arm out from under her and found the switch to shut off the screech.

Jordan started to ease away. He used the other arm to hold her there. Her skin still felt as warm and moist as it had last night. She propped her chin on the back of her hand, as she had last night, and ran the fingers of her free hand through his hair.

Then she snuggled her head into the hollow of his shoulder. "Oh, _God_ , have to get _up_ —"

"Why?" he said. He was in no hurry for her to move.

Jordan pulled the sheet up over the o of them, muffling her voice even further. "Because I want to do my morning run before the sun gets too high and the sand gets hot."

A slave to routine? Another thing to vary the image he carried of her. "Skip it one morning if you want to."

She grumbled into his hair.

"What?" Martin Castillo slid a hand under her chin and lifted her face.

"I said," and she slid back over supine, her hands interlocked behind her neck, "it would be like a drunkard taking one drink. I'd start finding excuses, my schedule would be shot to hell, and I'd end up looking like the fat lady in the corner carnival." Kicking the sheet out of the way, she stood up stretched, and went to rummage in a drawer. "So I go take my morning run." She tossed a pair of dark green running shorts onto the dresser's top, added a yellow t-shirt with the odd legend 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Kalamazoo', and shifted to a second drawer for underclothing.

He watched her moving, her unselfconscious nakedness. Eve with brisk practicality: he wondered, for a second, what Jordan would think of the description. "If you've got some clothes I can borrow, I'll go with you."

"You're on," she told him. "Just a minute." She left the room while dragging the shirt over her unbrushed hair. Two or three minutes later, Jordan returned with a second pair of shorts, larger than hers, and white. Tennis shorts. With them she had a man's button-front shirt, short-sleeved, in royal blue silk. "These might do. I don't know what to suggest on shoes—what do you think?"

"What do you run in?"

She flushed a little and raised one foot, showing him the callused sole. "Can't you tell? I run barefoot. And watch out for broken bottles and shells. It helps that I have a good amount of private land."

"I won't need shoes." He threw the sheet back and accepted the clothing. In the bundle was a set of underwear he recognized.

"They were still in the guest room she said, sounding apologetic, and possibly a little embarrassed At least she quickly changed the subject. "Do you want breakfast before or after?"

In all the time they had worked together on this case, he d never seen her pick up a pan except to make tea and once a skillet to make a grilled cheese sandwich that came out a little overdone. She had said defensively that she liked them overdone. "What's your idea of breakfast?" he asked.

A faint flush colored her face. "Fruit and cheese and tea, usually."

"Not very British, is it?"

She disappeared into the private bath and returned with a hairbrush. In front of the mirror, she carefully worked out the tangles and began to braid her hair.

He waited.

Finally, reluctantly, she admitted, "I can't cook."

Martin looked at her.

Her color deepened. "On the other hand I guess I could try to learn. I'm just really out of practice."

"They tell me," he said dryly, sardonically, "that you're never too old to learn."

"You sound like my mother."

He did not add that 'they' was _his_ mother and the phrase one of her favorites.

Halfway down the marble stairs, she paused to ask "What time do you have to be at work?"

He stopped. Well he did show a dedication to his work. And not many women would stop to ask a question like that when his work was so much at variance with her past life. And Alan Connelly's. "It is Saturday. I'm usually off on Saturdays."

"You mean you really don't live a the office?" A somewhat mocking note crept into her voice.

"No." He hid laughter in the word.

Her head turned. She grinned, and adopting a patently false little girl note, Jordan said, "Then can we do whatever I want to do today?"

Agreeing to that sounded like asking for trouble. He tried to read her expression. Lacking pockets, he clasped his hands behind his back, with the sudden absurd desire to cross his fingers. He suppressed it. But she raised an eyebrow as if she could read his mind.

"And," she demanded, "put your hands out here so I can see you aren't crossing your fingers."

This time he ignored solemnity and dignity, and held both fists out. "What do you want to do?"

With the brilliant smile and mischief in her voice, an unspoken 'gotcha', Jordan told him, "In the old cliche, whatever you want to do."

"You have a lot of Biscayne Bay out back."

On the bottom step she paused—and threw both hands out, palms up. "Oy vey. In less than five minutes, the man happens on both my guilty secrets."

"Which are?"

"I can't cook—and I can't swim."

If there hadn't been embarrassment, real embarrassment in her face, he might have asked why. After a moment, he stepped down past her, turned, and held out a hand. "I'll teach you."

"You can try."

Martin pointed out that in one night, she had learned the rudiments of chess.

Jordan smiled. "Under your coaching. So I'll try."

The early edges of sunrise sparkled through the new glass in the kitchen window.

On the island in the center of the room, he noticed a white envelope and an open letter, the latter weighed down with a teacup. The letterhead carried the British crown, and the notation "CI5". At the bottom, a precise hand had written in heavy black ink the name "George Cowley". He remembered her earlier comments, over the mess with Dutch.

This letter affected her. Only peripherally did it affect him, and in no way concerning business. He turned away.

Jordan stood beside the refrigerator, with a collection of fruit, cheese, and bottles in her arms, and regarded him with an odd, thoughtful expression. She spread the food out on the island, and picked up the letter, folding it neatly, tucking it back into the envelope.

In silence, she started the coffee brewer. As she reached for cups, she said, "Mr. Cowley's been kind enough to offer me a job."

He hadn't expected that. He felt briefly for pockets that the shorts did not have, then let his hands relax.

Her next words carried a belligerent tone. "I suppose you're going to tell me you don't want me to leave."

Was she afraid he would? Or afraid he wouldn't? He gave the truth, anyway. "What you do is your decision."

Now her eyes widened, and then dropped. He caught her studying him under her lashes, as if she weren't sure what to say.

He added the rest of it. "But no. I don't want you to leave."

A quick, covert smile flickered on her mouth and vanished. More soberly, Jordan said, "I can't live like that anymore." The braid swished across her back. She crossed to the back door, and turned the key to unlock it. When she opened the back door, the ocean air had the clean salty scent of Eden revisited.

"It's here, too," she said to him. "Miami or Africa, it's all the same. Men don't change. Africa's in all of us." He saw her arms interlock, and she added, "But we don't have to let the darkness kill us."

After a second, he padded across the floor and slowly slid his arms around her waist, alert for the least evidence she wanted not to be touched. Instead, her arms shifted, and she laid her hands over his. Then, at the last, she leaned back against him.

Martin tightened his embrace. It would take time.... It could work. He changed the verb. _Would_ work.

§§§

  


Letter, delivered to  
Jordan Connelly  
May 1, 1986

 

 _In the tradition, it seems the first thing that is written is that the author of the letter is dead. Samurai, or course, are creatures of tradition—therefore, I am dead._

 _I remember, in Africa, your favorite question was always 'why'. You seemed unable then, Jordan-chan, to comprehend a world in which reason and logic had no place. I have seen that world. For me, that world came into being as I hunted through the ruins of my city for my family. That world left me the legacy that even now destroys my body._

 _Americans created that world. The _giri_ is theirs, yet few of them see how they foster that creation. Someone must show them the result of unreason. They must see their own destructive potential._

If I succeed, the the world will be shown the truth. If I fail, I leave my legacy to you. The last lesson.

Remember, Jordan-chan. The most destructive force on earth is mankind. We kill ourselves.

Shiogi Takahashi Kent

 

 

 

THE END


	13. The original publisher's editoral note

EDITORIAL

l wasn't originally intending to do an editorial. I hate writing  
editorials. So I'll consider doing this penance for being so incredibly late  
with getting this zine into print.

First off I want to apologize. First to Jane and Deb. It shouldn't have  
taken so long. Second, an apology to all of you gave me preorders, and then  
had to wait and wait and wait...only to receive your checks back with a request  
for new ones. It would have been a lot simpler for all of us if I'd just  
cashed the things in the first place. This is the fifth zine I've published;   
think l'd know what l'm doing by now.

Having done the apologies, I will now move on to the thank yous.   
again at the top of the list is Jane and Deb. Thank you for being brilliant.  
Thank you for being patient. And most of all, thank you for not killing me.   
And Jane, being so close by (the bedroom down the hall) certainly had the  
proximity. Thanks to Jane and to Brenda Cunningham for proofing. Thanks to  
Marguerite for her editorial skills. Thanks to Barbara T. for knowing when to  
nag and how much to nag when she did nag. Which she did. Thanks to Karen  
Howard, for being the first person to order, and for the strongly worded  
letter. I appreciate both. Thanks to Jean and to Marilyn for the fantastic   
and timely artwork. Thanks to Edward James Olmos for the ever enigmatic and  
interesting Lieutenant Castillo without whom this story would read quite a bit  
differently. That's a hint, Deb. I want you to rewrite it and sell it.

Now, for a bit of editorializing. This is the stuff I hate to do. I  
actually only have one thing to say: I do not want to hear one Mary Sue  
comment. I am sick to death of the term. lt's come to describe any female  
character, and it is a label that infuriates me. Jordan is a strong  
individual. She, like all of us, deserves better than a ready-made label.  
This story is one of the best pieces of fiction (fan or otherwise) that I have  
ever read. I appreciate it on its own terms. I hope you do as well. There:  
Enough soapbox stuff. Read. Enjoy.

Susan J. Sizemore


End file.
